Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1893 — A YARD AN HOUR. [ARTICLE]

A YARD AN HOUR.

REM ARK AI ILK GROWTH OF THE WEST IN POPULATION. Interesting Facts and Figures by Senator Dawes, of Massachusetts A Wonderful Development. In his speech at Pittsfield on Monday evening, Senator Dawes made pointed reference to (he marvelous growth which the western section of the United States has achieved since bis entrance on public life. “The country,” he said, “has been widening and going westward and westward, to the Pacific ('oast and then on beyond, until the latitude itself fails to chronicle our onward march, and westward falls into the eastward, so that the sun will not go down to-night upon our westward border until it shall have arisen upon the const of Maine.” The continuousness of this growth is shown by the steady westward movement of the center of population. When the census of 1830 was taken, two years after Mr. Dawes’ public career began, the center of population was located at a point twenty-three miles southeast of Pnrkersburg, W. Va. Tho census of 1890 puts the point twenty miles east of Columbus, Ind. Here is a westward movement of 221) miles in forty years, giving an average rate of 5.32 miles per year. If the measurement is carried sixty years further back, to the tho first census of 1790, we find that there lias been in the hundred years a movement westward of 505 miles, tho center of population having passed from a point twenty-three miles east of Baltimore, Md., to the location in Indiana noted above. The rate of progress for the whole period averages 5.05 miles a year, or seventy-three feet a day. In other words, for a century the center has been moving westward at an average rate of a yard an hour, with one foot thrown in every twenty-four hours for good measurement. The slowest progress was made in the second decade, from 181)0 to 1810. In this period the population center achieved only thirtysix miles of westing, or at the rate of about two feet, two inches per hour. Tho swiftest progress came in the seventh decade, from 1850 lo ltd}:), when tho center moved westward uo less than eighty-one miles, nr at the r ite of about four feet ten inches per hour. During the last decade of the census enumeration, from 1880 to 1890, the rate dropped a little below the average, forty-eight miles of westing being made, which would be about two feet eleven inches per hour. We may add, to bring tho estimate down to the beginning of 1893, that, if the rate of progress noted in the lust census decade bus been maintained in the two and one-hnlf years since the census was taken, the present center is found at a point eight miles east of Columbus, Ind., about half-way between that city and Wayuesburg. And tho census of 1900 will, at the same ratio, bring it to a point nearly two miles south of Uuionville, ind. It is a curious fact that, while the westward movement of the population has covered no less than 9 1-3 degrees of longitude (9 degrees, 21 minutes, 7 seconds), this movement lias run almost on a straight line, the extreme northern and southern variation embracing less than one-third of a degree of latitude (18 minutes, 5(1 seconds). To put tho contrast more distinctly, we may sny that, while the western movement for the century aggregates 505 miles, the extreme northern and southern variation is a little under tweuty-two miles, and the finishing point of tho line is only some six miles south of tho starting point. The slightness of this variation may be taken asHkowing that, if you divide tho United States by the thirty-ninth parallel of north latitude, the growtii of the population in the two sections thus made has been very near equal during the hundred years covered by the eleven censuses. In view of the fact that the tide of immigration from foreign countries has set mainly into the northern section, such an equality in the growth of the population is a development that would hardly have been looked for.—[Boston Herald.