st reported give a net rural loss for the
first time in the group of states known as the "east north central." Yet
in both cases, the net rural loss for the section was less than 1%.

Taking 2,500 as the dividing line, the last census reports that in every
state in the country the urban population has increased since 1900, but in
six states the rural population has diminished. In two states, Montana and
Wyoming, the country has outstripped the city; but in general, the country
over, the cities grew from 1900 to 1910 three times as fast as the rural
sections. While the country communities of the United States have grown
11.2% the cities and towns above 2,500 have increased 34.8%. In the
prosperous state of Iowa, the only state reporting an absolute loss, the
rural sections lost nearly 120,000. Rural Indiana lost 83,127, or 5.1%;
rural Missouri lost 68,716, or 3.5%; rural villages in New Hampshire show
a net loss of 10,108, or 5.4%; and rural Vermont has suffered a further
loss of 8,222, or 4.2%, though the state as a whole made the largest gain
for forty years.

These latest facts from the census are valuable for correcting false
notions of rural depletion. It is unfair to count up the number of rural
townships in a state which have failed to grow and report that state
rurally decadent. For example, a very large majority of the Illinois
townships with less than 2,500 people failed to hold their own the past
decade,--1,113 out of 1,592. But in many cases the loss was merely
nominal; consequently we find, in spite of the tremendous drain to
Chicago, the rural population of the state as a whole made a slight gain.
This case is typical. Thousands of rural villages have lost population;
yet other thousands have gained enough to offset these losses in all but
the six states mentioned.

_Losses in Country Towns_

New England continues to report losses, not only in the rural villages,
but also in the country towns of between 2,500 and 5,000 population. This
was true the last decade in every New England state except Vermont.
Massachusetts towns of this type made a net loss of about 30,000, or 15%;
although nearly all the larger towns and many villages in that remarkably
prosperous state made gains. This class of towns has also made net losses
the past decade in Indiana, Iowa, South Dakota, South Carolina, Alabama
and Mississippi, although in these last four states the smaller
communities under 2,500 made substantial gains. T