LURE OF THE CITIES.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCIV, Issue 14451, 25 May 1911, Page 6

LURE OF THE CITIES.

AMEKICA'S EXPERIENCE. Of -the -91,972,267 people wlio comprise ■ tite population of . the United States-,- ■ 3S,ayo,olX) live in the sixteen small-States which burder the Atlantic seaboard as■far as South Carolina; 39,100,000 make their homes and earn their--livelihoods in the fifteen larger States which divide nn the remainder of the demesne of the Republic to the foothills of the Rockies: and onlv 14,208,000. are found in the sixteen great .Commonwealths which stretch from Mexico to Canada, and from the plains of the Missouri to the Pacific.' The country falls naturally into these divisions, and for jmrposes of comparison their existence greatly facilitates the tiisk of giving some definite interpretation to the unemotional figures of the recently completed census, for example, the great Middle West, with a population hal'f a million larger than that of the East, only shows an average growth per State of 12.G per cent., during the last teu years, as against 16.4 per cent, in the Eastern States. This is not because of any lack of ' prosperity, for no section of the country is better sheltered from financial misfortune; neither is it because of a' plethora, of population, for the Middle West can accommodate millions more people than it. holds at present. It j means that the forces which build up I-and those which replete a country are nearer an equilibrium here than they have ever liean before in anv errea't section of the United States" °The lure, of fields of the West and the attractions. of the cities of the East are taking away too many of the vouii" people.- In lowa, as an instance,"there has been an increase in nomilation of only three-tenths of 1 ner cent, in the last decade, yet lowa has never known a more prosperous ten years. Modest which ;s t osay moderate, prosperity however, no longer answers the purnose. The result will lie, unless concutions change materially that the pre. dominance in population will soon disappear from tlve central section of the Republic to be divided' betwreu the over-crowded cities of tho fast and the lnlis and plains of the Far West. For the drones, the unambitious and the failures, the slums of the n-reat cities, which is to say the East'sT for those with quickened ambition aii-i a love of adventure, the struggle with Nature and the chance of a"fortuue. wliich is the key-note of ilie West. Between them, the land of moderate success, of a fair average of happiness and: more than ordinary prospect- of contentment which has not yet crme to its own, but which is still the backhone of he country's greatness.