A POPULATION PROBLEM.

Hot Lakes Chronicle, Volume 3, Issue 144, 4 September 1895, Page 4

A POPULATION PROBLEM.

' There is no more pressing problem at this time in America,' says the Humanitarian, ' tban that pertaining to the cities of the United States. Statistics show how rapidly their population has increased in proportion to that outside their environs. In 1790 one-thirteenth of the population lived in cities of 8000 inhabitants and over) in 1850 the proportion had increased to one-eighth ; now about one-third of the total are residents of cities. This rapid growth, coupled with notoriously corrupt and inefficient municipal government, makes the situation a serious one, the more so when we take into consideration the diverse elements to be dealt with. The most vicious and criminal classes are naturally found in the cities, and in the proportion of two to one they are of foreign birth and parentage, and are oat of sympathy with the American spirit and habits. In New York four-fifths of the proportion are of foreign extraction, and in Chicago the proportion is overwhelming, there being no fewer than 91 per cent, of the population of foreign birth or parentage. The illiteracy of these people is deplorable and renders tbem particularly inaccessible to enlightenment. Mr Bryce, author of ' The American Commonwealth,' says that municipal government is the one conspicuous failure in America. It is ground for hope that the civic federations and citizen's leagues which have been formed in several of the large cities are already accomplishing a measure of reform.'