Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1899: Volume LVI, No. 1Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1899: Volume LVI, No. 1
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
their factories in the small cities and towns, there are other
industries that prosper most in the great cities. Commerce, moreover,
emphatically favors the great centers rather than the small or
intermediate centers." In examining the structure of city populations,
a preponderance of the female sex appears, and is explained by the
accentuated liability of men over women in cities to death from
dangers of occupation, vice, crime, and excesses of all kinds. There
are also present in the urban population a relatively larger number
of persons in the active period of life, whence an easier and more
animated career, more energy and enterprise, more radicalism and less
conservatism, and more vice, crime, and impulsiveness generally may be
expected. Of foreign immigrants, the least desirable class are most
prone to remain in the great cities; and with the decline of railway
building and the complete occupation of the public lands the author
expects that immigrants in the future will disperse less readily than
in the past, but in the never-tiring energy of American enterprise
this may not prove to be the case. As to occupation, the growth of
cities is found to favor the development of a body of artisans and
factory workmen, as against the undertaker and employer, and "that
the class of day laborers is relatively small in the cities is reason
for rejoicing." It is found "emphatically true that the growth of
cities not only increases a nation's economic power and energy, but
quickens the national pulse.... A progressive and dynamic civilization
implies the good and bad alike. The cities, as the foci of progress,
inevitably contain both." The development of suburban life, stimulated
by the railroad and the trolley, and the transference of manufacturing
industries to the suburbs, are regarded as factors of great promise
for the amelioration of the recognized evils of city life and for the
solution of some of the difficulties it offers and the promotion of its
best results.
[10] The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century. A Study in
Statistics. By Adna Ferrln Weber. (Columbia University Studies In
History, Economics, and Public Law.) New York: Published for Columbia
University by the Macmillan Company. Pp. 495. Price, $3.50.
* * * * *
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