Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1882 — Growth of Great Cities. [ARTICLE]

Growth of Great Cities.

The growth of some of our great Western cities within the last decade is something anomalous. They have grown out of all proportion with the surrounding communities. Where were found, a few years ago, nothing but swamp and “primeval groves,” are found now paved streets and magnificent buildings. So rapid has been the concentration of wealth and population in oertain centers that people, at a loss to comprehend the forces which are drawing them together, are wondering why so many are leaving the comforts of the country to live in the alleys and slums of crowded cities. The tendency of modern civilization is to mass population and wealth, so the urban population all over the Union is growing very much faster than the rural; and the urban population of the West is increasing more rapidly than that of the East or South. The growth of the urbau population of the ten Western States, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, lowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska has been 61. C per cent from 1870 to 1880. The population of cities of 10,000 and upward is about one-fourth of the entire nation, while a few years ago it was not more than one-sixteenth. The population of great cities is almost one-seventh of our entire population, and thirty years ago it was about one-fortieth. This shows the rapid growth of great oities. At the taking of the last census there were in the nation 243 oities whose population was 10,000 and upward, and of these twenty had a population of 100,000 and upward ; tiie population of the twenty great cities being 1,000,000 greater tliau that of all the others. In judgments between the rich and poor, consider not what tho poor man needs but what is his own.