However, emphasis upon this great industrial revolution should not be allowed to obscure the no less remarkable development in agriculture. The acreage in improved farm lands rose from 113,032,614 in 1850 to 478,451,750 in 1910. In the same period the number of farms increased from 1,449,073 to 6,361,502. Notwithstanding the significant fact that "whereas the total population increased 21 per cent between 1900 and 1910, the urban population increased 34.8 per cent and the rural population 11.2 per cent," the broad basis of the population during the half a century here under consideration has remained agricultural, and in 1913 it was estimated that at the present rate of transformation "it will take a generation before the relative number of industrial wage workers will have reached half of all bread winners." _The Development of the West_ When Hayes was inaugurated, a broad wedge of territory separated the organized states of the East from their sister commonwealths in the far West--Oregon, California, and Nevada. Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Dakota, and Indian Territory still remained territories. Their combined population in 1870 was under half a million, less than that of the little state of Connecticut. New Mexico with 91,000 and Utah with 86,000 might, with some show of justification, have claimed a place among the states because Oregon was inhabited by only 90,000 people. The commonwealth of Nevada, with 42,000, was an anomaly; it had been admitted to the Union in 1864 to secure the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. This vast and sparsely settled region was then in the second stage of its economic evolution. The trapper, hunter, and explorer had gathered most of their harvest, and the ranchmen and cowboys with their herds of cattle were roaming the great grazing areas, waging war on thieves, land syndicates, and finally going down to defeat in the contest with the small farmer who fenced off the fertile fields and planted his homestead there. So bitter were the contests among the cattle kings, and so extensive was the lawlessness in these regions during the seventies and early eighties that Presidents were more than once compelled to warn the warlike parties and threaten them with the Federal troops.