To the density of city population there is hardly any limit. Some wards in New York are settled at the rate of five hundred thousand people to the mile; all Manhattan Island averages about a hundred thousand, but this is, of course, mere “home space."

There are many difficulties in drawing distinctions between city and country, as we must for statistical purposes. I have tried to lay emphasis above rather on their interrelation and essential unity, yet the line must be drawn somewhere. It was General Francis A. Walker, Director of the Census in 1870, who suggested 8000 as a critical size, all communities with fewer inhabitants than that being defined as "rural." The Twelfth Census reduced this number to 4000, the Thirteenth to 2500. What has been the effect of this change of standard on computations of country growth? Apparently to make country population seem to grow more slowly by about a fifth of its total amount. The Census gives us the total populations for cities of 100,000, for those of 25,000, of 10,000, of 5000, and of 2500. If we make the experiment of regarding each of these sizes in succession as a limiting size between country and city, we shall get for the country growth of the last decade the successive estimates, 16, 13, 11, 10, and 9 per cent; smaller values as you set the city limit further down. For this example I have taken no account of the passing of "rural" communities into the "urban" class during the decade. With this allowance

that is, counting the increase of population during the decade of the area that was rural in 1910, whether it stayed so or not our nine goes up to eleven.

If the "city" minimum were set a little lower, the case might be made to look worse yet for the country.

The reductions in the limit to 4000 and 2500 appear to have been made with the eyes rather on the rus than on the urbs. Is a place of 2500 really a city? The dweller in one of 100,000 will hardly think so. Form of government is, of course, not a satisfactory means of distinguishing; but surely there is some

common element in the usual notion of city, citified, and urban that can be used in defining. I think the words carry for all of us the idea of paved streets, compactly and continuously closed in by permanent buildings several stories high and pretty crowded with people. Public parks do not interrupt the city concept at all, nor do waterways which are used for traffic. The community at the mouth of the Charles is really one city, although governed by several mayors and councils.

Rural population lives in isolated houses. Such is the country population that I find widespread about here with a density of 31 to the square mile; but between this rural life and city life is another type, that of the village or small city. 'Village life is marked by a drawing together of homes; that is its distinction from the true country. Perhaps the greatest hardship of country life is the lonesomeness, above all for the women. The village is built up by this country longing for society, and the village appears therefore as soon as two houses stand side by side. When they are so clustered and grouped that they have no farms annexed, it is plain that the village has arrived. The space occupied is an essential part of the idea. Not how many are the people, but how near together do they live? The Michigan General Laws are suggestive when they authorize the incorporation as a village of any community that has at least 300 people on at least one square mile of ground.

are.

The city appears in the growth of the village when the increasing material nearness of men brings about social repulsions. It is the delight of moving to the village that I may have neighbors; of going to the city that I need not know who my neighbors Material crowding of men has brought evils in its train against which the city must defend itself. To prevent vehicles from sticking in the mud of heavily traveled streets, the streets must be paved, and as further defenses we must now have city lighting, policing, sewerage, and water supply, all because there are now so many of us so near together.

The blessings of the village become curses with further growth,

unless "city" remedies are applied. The very crowding brings a thinning out at the center. In the heart of the great modern cities nobody lives but janitors and caretakers of stores and office buildings. While each of the twenty-odd square miles of Manhattan Island has more than a hundred thousand residents, the business center, in Wards Two and Three near the southern tip of the island, has less than seven thousand to the mile. The great example, of course, is London, with its old "City" steadily dwindling; but more than that, the central fifth of the whole County of London has fewer inhabitants with each decade, as shops and offices take the place of homes.

Country people live in isolated homes, village homes are neighborly, and the city defends its inmates from neighbors who may not be desired. The line cannot be sharply drawn between them; the best thing to use is the average from the facts of many large cities. We learn from that how people do live in large cities.

From studies of many large cities in Europe as well as in America, it appears that a reasonable lower limit of density of population for a city is ten thousand people to a square mile. This is not far from the official average for American great cities.1 All areas continuously settled at the rate of over ten thousand to the mile are cities; all areas less densely settled, villages, until the houses come to be isolated, when we have reached the country. This throws Charlottenburg in with Berlin, Hoboken and Jersey City with New York, and makes Cambridge, Somerville, Chelsea, and Brookline essential parts of Boston, with a total population this year, 1913, of nine hundred thousand people.

Most of our cities contain city part, village part, and country part. So does Vienna, but most European cities have expanded beyond their limits and citified their suburbs. London has invaded several counties.

1 Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, September, 1909: "Anthropography of Great Cities."

The land has been settled, population has been developed slowly in the country, as befits the sparse agricultural occupation of the land; in the cities, rapidly, at the demand and under the stimulus of country development. No exodus from the country has occurred except as the country, exuberant and lifegiving, brings forth a population in excess of agricultural needs. This it is always doing, and with this surplus it creates the cities that supplement and crown the life of the land.

PSYCHIC CAUSES OF RURAL MIGRATION 1

ERNEST R. GROVES

IN modern civilization the increasing attractiveness of the city is one of the apparent social facts. Social psychology may reasonably be expected to throw light upon the causes of this movement of population from rural to urban conditions of life. Striking illustrations of individual preference for city life, even in opposition to the person's economic interests, suggest that this problem of social behavior so characteristic of our time contains important mental factors.

Since sensations give the mind its raw material,3 the mind may be said to crave stimulation. "In the most general way of viewing the matter, beings that seem to us to possess minds show in their physical life what we may call a great and discriminating sensitiveness to what goes on at any present time in their environment." 4 This interest of the mind in the receiving of stimulation for its own activity is an essential element in any social problem. The individual reacts socially "with a great and discriminating sensitiveness" to his environment, just as he reacts physically to his stimuli to conserve pleasure and avoid pain.

The fundamental sources of stimuli are, of course, common to all forms of social grouping, but one difference between rural and urban life expresses itself in the greater difficulty of obtaining under usual conditions certain definite stimulations from 1 Copyright. Reprinted from the American Journal of Sociology by permission of the University of Chicago Press.

2 Gillette, Constructive Rural Sociology, p. 42.

3 Parmelee, The Science of Human Behavior, p. 290.

4 Royce, Outlines of Psychology, p. 21.