Chapter 26

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL MOVEMENT

The century from 1790 to 1890 saw our people multiplied sixteen times, from 3,929,214 at its beginning, to 62,622,250 at its end. The low percentage of increase for the last decade, about 20 per cent., disappointed even conservative estimates. The cities not only absorbed this increase, but, except in the West, made heavy draughts upon the country population. Of each 1,000 people in 1880, 225 were urban; in 1890, 290. Chicago's million and a tenth was second only to New York's million and a half. Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and St. Louis appeared respectively as the third, fourth, and fifth in the list of great cities. St. Paul, Omaha, and Denver domiciled three or four times as many as ten years before. Among Western States only Nevada lagged. The State of Washington had quintupled its numbers. The centre of population had travelled fifty miles west and nine miles north, being caught by the census about twenty miles east of Columbus, Indiana.