Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/649

Rh another area of counties with decreasing rural population begins and extends down over Berks and Chester Counties, Pennsylvania, Salem County, New Jersey, the two northernmost of the three Delaware counties, and the three most northerly of the counties of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, comprising in all eight counties and some four thousand square miles of territory. This southern extension of the region of decrease last mentioned, both in Pennsylvania and on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, very nearly approaches the northern prolongations of still another district in which the rural population was less in 1890 than in 1880. The principal portion of this district lies in Virginia, in which State it comprises forty-five counties. On the south it extends into one of the border counties of North Carolina, and on the north stretches over southern and western Maryland up into central Pennsylvania. It has an area of 24,092 square miles, divided among sixty counties, of which Henrico County, Virginia, containing the city of Richmond, is the only one which has not less rural population than it had ten years ago. In Virginia, with two exceptions, all the decreasing counties lie east of the summits of the Blue Ridge range, and these decreasing counties include nearly the entire Piedmont and midland section of the State. Some—but by no means all—of the tide-water counties lying on or near the Chesapeake Bay, owing probably to the growth of the oyster and trucking industries, have gained population. The rate of decrease in this group of decreasing counties has been somewhat less than in most of the others. The rural population in 1880 and 1890 of the area referred to compares as follows:

The last two groups are apparently detached extensions of the eastern arm of the great northeastern decreasing district. The western arm of this district has a general southwest and northeast direction, roughly parallel to the trend of the Appalachian system and to the west of it. As before stated, a western offshoot or projection from this arm crosses the entire State of Indiana, and comes within five miles or less of connecting it with the great area of decreasing counties which has the Mississippi River for its center. In northwestern Ohio and northern central Indiana there is a tract in which the population outside of the cities, towns, and villages has increased during the last ten years. Many if not most of these counties lie in the region in which natural gas has been so extensively made available during the last ten years; but whatever be the cause, the rural or extra-urban population of this