Rural population

“ It ought to be evident what a tremendous advantage it is to farmers in a district to have such organizations, what a lever they can pull and control. I have tried to indicate the difference between a rural population and a rural community, between a people loosely knit together by the vague ties of a common latitude and longitude, and people who are closely knit together in an association and who form a true social organism, a true rural community, where the general will can find expression and society is malleable to the general will. ”

“ The time has now come when it is believed that rural population and agricultural tendencies are sufficiently well known to enable those interested in rural life development to determine what are the most suitable centers for community development. ”

“ Characteristics of Population.—Rural life feels in each region the reactions of nature. The narrow life of the hills, the open life of the plains, the peaceful life of the comfortable plantation with its lazy river and its delightful climate, each has its peculiar characteristics that are due in part at least to nature. But these features are complicated by social elements of population. The American rural community of to-day is composed of individuals who differ in age and fortune and kinship, and who vary in qualities and resemblances. ”

“ Farm life, so familiar and apparently so healthful, was not thought of as constituting a national problem until late in the nineteenth century.
293. THE CITYWARD DRIFT.—A half century ago more than three fourths of our population was rural; to-day less than half of the people of the United States live in the country. Both urban and rural districts have been steadily increasing in population since the opening of the nineteenth century, but since 1900 the city population has increased three times as fast as has the rural population. ”

“ A small city of perhaps twenty thousand population will contain from four hundred to six hundred families per square mile, whereas a typical agricultural community in a prosperous agricultural state will hardly average more than ten families per square mile. The farming class is isolated from other classes. Farmers, of course, mingle considerably in a business and political way with the men of their trading town and county seat; but, broadly speaking, farmers do not associate freely with people living under urban conditions and possessing other than the rural point of view. ”

“ The nominally rural population is becoming more and more urban in character, and composed not solely of rustics,—who live in and by the soil and are altogether more natural in their habits,—but largely of town-dwellers who only sleep in country dormitories. ”

“ The real problem before the American people is how to make the country population most effective, not how to increase this population; the increase will be governed by the operation of economic law.
The sorting of our people has not yet reached its limit of approximate stability. Many persons who live on the land really are not farmers, but are the remainders of the rural phase of society.
A decline in rural population in any region may be expressive of the general adjustment as between country and city ”

“ The author believes that the rural population is only stationary, and is ample, with the modern improvements in farming, for the tillage of the land, while only its increase and surplus pour into the towns; but the continuous migration of the most vigorous and energetic to the manufacturing districts, and the higher mortality there, may be producing a gradual deterioration. ”

“ If we go up and down France we shall find the rural population decidedly dense. [77] One little village usually follows another closely and every collection of huts swarms with human bipeds. There are, indeed, vast forests and marshes which might with better management be put under the plow, but the extent of arable land is great. Heaven surely loves the peasants, it has made so many of them. ”

“ In the more densely populated countries of Western Europe a safety-valve for the inordinate increase of the rural population has been provided by the development of manufacturing industry. High wages and the attractions of town life draw the rural population to the industrial centres, and the movement has increased to such an extent that already complaints are heard of the rural districts becoming depopulated. ”

“ The Census Commissioners make an interesting test of depopulation of rural areas by taking the 112 Registration {236} Districts which are entirely rural, and which had in 1901 an aggregate population of 1,330,319. ”

“ And it should not be forgotten that there has been a large and constant growth both of our agricultural wealth and of our rural population. During the last half-century there was a gain of 500 per cent. ”

“ The percentage of persons in the rural population changes at about the same rate as does that of the persons occupied in agriculture. In 1890 it was 64, in 1900 it was 60, and in 1910 it was 54 per cent. The percentage of the population in cities of 8000 or more has steadily increased. ”

“ But the rural population were in a very different case; those who worked on the land were indeed poor, fared coarsely, dressed meanly and wore no shoes, but they were sober and industrious and lived in decent homes, and their wives and children were properly fed and clothed ”

“ In all but
two States, Montana and Wyoming, the urban population has increased
faster than the rural population. The increase, since 1900, in the
population living in urban territory was 11,035,841 or 34.9 per cent,
while the increase in population living in rural territory during the
same period was 4,941,850 or 11.1 per cent. For the United States as a
whole, therefore, the rate of increase for the population of urban areas
was three times that for the population living in rural territory. ”

“ In so far as the cityward drift is composed of such individuals, it may be a helpful movement, since individuals unsuited to rural life may find themselves adapted to some type of urban life. When unneeded and unhelpful individuals are removed from the country, the rural population may be more efficient and more prosperous, even though relatively more sparse. ”

“ There has been, however, much effort in England to bring at least some land again into the use of the masses of the rural population. In 1819, as part of the administration of the poor law, Parliament passed an act facilitating the leasing out by the authorities of common land belonging to the parishes to the poor, in small "allotments," as they were called, by the cultivation of which they might partially support themselves. Allotments are small pieces of land, usually from an eighth of an acre to an acre in size, rented out for cultivation to poor or working-class families. ”

“ In the large cities all these are intensified, but they are everywhere apparent whenever a community passes beyond the village stage. The line that separates the village or small town from the city is an arbitrary one. The United States calls those communities rural that have a population not exceeding twenty-five hundred, but it is less a question of population than of interests and activities. When agriculture gives place to trade or manufacturing as the leading economic interest; when the community takes on the social characteristics that belong to urban life ”

“ Nature of the Decline of Rural Population.--It has been shown that the absolute reduction in the number of those living in rural districts is very small. If, however, we take the statistics of farmers and farm-labourers in these same districts we often find a very considerable decline. The real extent of the decline of agriculture is somewhat concealed by the habit of including in the agricultural population a good many people not engaged in work of agriculture. ”

“ In the sample data products, rural population and housing units are subdivided into rural farm and rural nonfarm. Rural farm comprises all rural households and housing units on farms (places from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were sold in 1989) ; rural nonfarm comprises the remaining rural population and housing units.
Other Map Products and Computer Files The Census Bureau has produced individual Urbanized Area Boundary Maps. ”

“ Rural Policy
Since the beginning of my Administration, I have been committed to improving the effectiveness with which the Federal government deals with the problems and needs of a rapidly changing rural America. The rapid growth of some rural areas has placed a heavy strain on communities and their resources. There are also persistent problems of poverty and economic stagnation in other parts of rural America. Some rural areas continue to lose population, as they have for the past several decades. ”

“ The population, with the exception of mechanics, and these were a very small proportion, and the few professional men and country merchants, was entirely agricultural. This rural pursuit confined at home and closely to business every one; and popular meetings were confined to religious gatherings on Sunday in each neighborhood, and the meeting of a few who could spare the time at court, in the village county-seat, twice a year. ”

“ According to the census of 1905, the rural population amounted to 42.5 per cent., the small or country towns to 25.5 per cent., the medium-sized towns to 12.9 per cent., and the large towns to 19.1 per cent. ”

“ They cause a proper distribution of population between town and country. For many years in this country there has been a movement of population from the rural districts into the cities and manufacturing villages. ”

“ Another and much more considerable part of the farming population in the East was constantly migrating to the West and Southwest with their promising opportunities. Some country districts thinned out; others remained stationary. But whether the rural census increased or not, there were other factors which sent up or down the value of farming lands. ”

“ During the last few years the tendency has been towards towns. But the large increase in the population is still to be seen in rural regions. In India two-thirds of the villages have less than 200 inhabitants each, while 1,000 have from 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants. Notwithstanding this fact, the population, in some parts of the country, is very dense. ”

“ Among all classes there has been a rush from the country to the towns; and there has been a growing tendency to regard rural England rather as a playground than as the source of the nation’s best inhabitants. This tendency has unfortunately, in my judgment at least, been fostered by a legislation which has refused to give agriculture the encouragement it requires, with the result that our villages in England almost all tell the same tale of falling population. ”

“ The field chosen covers rural life in the United States, and “particularly those conditions to be found in the great agricultural sections of the Central valley,” because in this area are to be found both the system of diversified agriculture and the intensive culture resulting from the increase of population. Six of the twenty-eight chapters are on the village, two on the rural church, two on rural health, two on farmers’ organizations, and one on the county fair. Questions, references, and topics for research have been added at the close of each chapter. ”

“ Now, the bulk of this population, until very recent years, has been rural rather than urban, and the towns themselves, large and small, have been made up of the country-born and country-bred, while almost the entire stream of emigration that has flooded and fertilized the Northwest has had its source in the hamlets and farms. It would be easy to show that the quality of this output from the rural districts has been even more remarkable than the quantity. ”

“ I have tried to show that modern civilisation is one-sided to a dangerous degree—that it has concentrated itself in the towns and left the country derelict. This tendency is peculiar to the English-speaking communities, where the great industrial movement has had as its consequence the rural problem I have examined. If the townward tendency cannot be checked, it will ultimately bring about the decay of [Pg 173] the towns themselves, and of our whole civilisation, for the towns draw their supply of population from the country. ”

“ But to this the stimulus is wanting, which a large town population, connected with the rural districts by easy and unexpensive means of communication, would afford. That town population, again, does not grow up, because the few wants and unaspiring spirit of the cultivators (joined until lately with great insecurity of property, from military and fiscal rapacity) prevent them from attempting to become consumers of town produce. ”

“ However, in spite of this story of rural depletion which has been often rehearsed, the rural sections of our country altogether have made surprising gains. City people especially are astonished to learn that our country, even if the cities should be eliminated entirely from the reckoning, has been making substantial progress. The 8,000 mark was for years reckoned as the urban point. Counting only communities of less than 8,000 people we find that in 1850 the country population numbered 20,294,290 ”

“ In other words the population of a habitable region may be classed as rural and urban. In the United States and western Europe, agricultural pursuits encourage rural life, each family living on its own estate. In Russia, the agricultural population usually cluster in villages. ”

“ In America the rapid increase in the size of the cities was due chiefly to an increasing stream of European immigrants who avoided the farm but were attracted to the urban environment. Population statisticians have been alert to discover whether this process is continuing or whether a change is taking place. Improvements in rural life and conscious efforts to control the movement of population have been observed as to their possible effect on the rural-urban population equilibrium. ”