Growth of Cities. were: Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, North Dakota, Minnesota and New Jersey. If to the foreign born found in these states be added the native born of foreign parentage, the foreign element is even more conspicuous. Thus, in 1910, persons, one or both of whose parents were foreign born, constituted in North Dakota and Minnesota 71 per cent of the population; in Rhode Island, 69 per cent; in Wisconsin, 67 per cent; in Massachusetts, 66 per cent; and in New York and Connecticut, 63 per cent. Next to the westward movement, the concentration of pop、 ulation in cities was the most striking tendency of the last century. In 1800 less than 4 per cent of the people of the country lived in cities of 10,000 inhabitants and upwards. This proportion had increased to 12 per cent in 1850. Since then the growth of cities has been so rapid that they contained in 1910 more than one-third of the total population of the country. A comparison of the last census with the three preceding decennial enumerations indicates how rapidly the United States is moving away from the condition of an agricultural country with a predominantly rural population. In 1880 only 29.5 per cent of the population lived in cities of 2,500 or more inhabitants; 70.5 per cent was rural. By 1890 the proportion had changed to 36.1 per cent urban and 63.9 per cent rural. 1900 found 40.5 per cent urban and 59.5 per cent rural. Finally in 1910 46.3 per cent lived in cities and 53.7 per cent in the country. Since in that year some 8.8 per cent of the population was returned as living in incorporated places containing less than 2,500 inhabitants, the country had already passed the point when more than half of its people were town-dwellers and concerned with the economic problems that result from the crowding together of people in dense centers of population. The waning importance of the country in comparison with the town is most in evidence in the extreme Eastern and the extreme Western sections of the country. In 1910, 83 per cent of the population of New England, 71 per cent of that of the Middle Atlantic, 53 per cent of that of the East North Central, and 57 per cent of that of the Pacific States were urban. In the other sections the rural population still predominated. In New York NEW ISSUES IN UNITED STATES 35 in 1910 more than half of the population of the state was found concentrated in New York City. Cities. A complicating aspect of the growth of cities in the United Foreign States has been the large foreign element which most of them Born in contain. In only fourteen of the fifty cities having more than 100,000 inhabitants in 1910 did native whites of native parentage constitute as much as one-half of the population. în twenty-one of these cities, fifteen of which were in the New England and Middle Atlantic divisions, over two-thirds of the population consisted of foreign-born whites and their children. In ten of them, including New York (40 per cent), Chicago (36 per cent), and Boston (36 per cent) the foreign born alone constituted more than one-third of the population. This large foreign element in American municipalities has added materially to the economic and political difficulties with which these rapidly growing centers of population have had to contend. the Con quest of the Continent. § 20. Up to the very recent past, the most absorbing eco- New Issues nomic interest of the people of the United States has been the Following conquest of the vast territory and the vast natural resources which it has been their good fortune to possess. This has given a materialistic trend to American civilization, which has caused unsympathetic foreign critics to describe Americans as a people entirely absorbed in the pursuit of "the almighty dollar." Signs are not lacking that, as the conquest of the continent is being achieved, Americans are giving more and more thought to questions connected with the uses of wealth and less and less to its mere acquisition. Allowing free scope to individual initiative and individual enterprise and confining governmental activity to the protection of property, without too much regard to the ways in which it may have been acquired, have proved excellent means of stimulating the production of wealth. But the production of wealth largely fails of its purpose if its distribution is so unequal that much of it is assigned to a small group of millionaires, while the great majority of the people find it difficult to maintain themselves in reasonable comfort. Side by side with liberty and property, equality has all along been a national ideal. Until recently it has been believed that these three ideals, liberty, equality and property, were entirely compatible. It is clear from the literature of the day that the conviction is forming in the popular consciousness that in protecting liberty and property the government of the United States has neglected the interests of equality. Once formed, this conviction will be a powerful aid to the correction of abuses and injustices that have been tolerated only because their seriousness has not been understood. The movement for the conservation of natural resources, the demand for protective labor laws, the measures taken to regulate the railroads and other public service corporations, and the dissolution of some of the most powerful of the trusts, all reflect the new spirit that is developing and that gives to some of the practical economic problems to be considered in later chapters the . intense interest of great moral issues. REFERENCES FOR COLLATERAL READING Lodge, A Short History of English Colonies in America; McMaster, History of the People of the United States, Vols. I. and II.; *Wilson, Division and Reunion; Rand, Economic History since 1763; *Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History; *Shaler, The United States of America, 2 vols.; *Whitney, The United States. CHAPTER III INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES (concluded) ture. § 21. Agriculture remains to-day, as it was in the colonial Progress of period, the dominant industry of the United States. This Agriculhas been the natural result of the extensive area of fertile land with which the country is endowed, and its still relatively sparse population. Of its principal agricultural products, three, corn, white potatoes and tobacco, were indigenous to the New World. The first, because of the ease with which it may be grown on new land, has contributed more than any other plant to the material development of the country. In colonial days, corn, hay, wheat and potatoes were leading crops in the North; corn, tobacco, rice and indigo in the South. With the invention of the cotton gin, a machine for separating the cotton seed from the cotton fiber devised by Eli Whitney in 1794, and of spinning machinery capable of treating the short-fibered variety of cotton which alone flourished on the mainland, that product began to be, as it has ever since remained, "king" in the Southern States; but corn, hay, wheat and potatoes continued to be the staples of the North. As cities arose truck and dairy farming to supply their needs became profitable. Meantime the pressing back of the Indians encouraged the keeping of stock, since this is practicable only in localities where property can be protected. Agricultural methods, both North and South, prior to the Civil War, were exhausting to the soil, and the wearing out of old lands was a strong incentive urging settlers to bring the superior soils of the Mississippi Valley under cultivation. The cheapness of land and the dearness of labor have been conditions favorable to the invention and use of labor-saving tools and machines. American farmers were from the first progressive. They were forced to devise methods better adapted to the conditions of a new country than those they brought with them from Europe. The invention of agri Recent De cultural machinery was especially stimulated during the Civil War, when the labor supply became even less adequate than before to the needs of the country. In this period many of the inventions were patented which have made American agriculture so different from that of the Old World. The tendency of these improvements has been to increase the productiveness of American farming not so much for each acre cultivated as for each man engaged in cultivation. Only recently has attention begun to be given on any large scale to the problem of getting as much as possible out of each acre of land, because only recently has lack of land been felt as a serious hardship by the ambitious American farmer. Since the close of the Civil War wheat cultivation has had velopments. a great development in the Northwest; the "corn belt " has been extended west of the Mississippi to the very borders of the arid region, and in that region itself cattle, horse and sheep grazing have become important industries. The extension of the "cotton belt" to include eastern Texas, and the rapid growth of the fruit industry in Florida and California are other changes of comparatively recent date. Meantime agriculture in the more settled portions of the country has become diversified and rotations of crops, calculated to preserve the fertile properties of the soil, have been introduced. The raising of green vegetables and small fruits and the keeping of cows, whose milk is sold in the city market, or converted into butter and cheese, are now chief interests to Eastern farmers. The present distribution of agricultural products in the United States is roughly indicated by the accompanying map. § 22. Among all of the products of the country corn still holds first place. Its relative importance in comparison with other agricultural staples is shown by the following table, based on statistics published by the United States Department of Agriculture: Important |