the number.

If the difference between the rural community death-rate and the rate in
all the cities of more than 8000 population in New York State be shown,
the difference between the city rate and the country rate is even less
than that shown in the table, being only 0.7 deaths in 1000 for 1908.
This shows that the boasted superiority of the country over cities is
not very great; that it is marked only in the case of a very large city
like New York; that, as the size of the city decreases, the difference
disappears, and that the country rate in the United States is high when
compared with the general rate of other countries like Denmark or even
England, where the general rate includes the large cities.

_Effect of children on death-rate._

An interesting sidelight on the apparent tendency of the country to have
an increasing death-rate, year by year, is shown by the meager figures
which are available on the subject of the number of small children in
the different towns. The Chief Clerk in the Census Office, Mr. William
S. Rossiter, has investigated the proportion of children in two rural
counties of New York State, Otsego and Putnam, and has discovered the
startling fact that while the population in those counties has hardly
changed since 1860, the proportion of young children has decreased
almost one third in the forty years ending with 1900, as shown by the
following table:--

TABLE IV. TABLE SHOWING PERCENTAGE OF CHILDREN IN OTSEGO AND PUTNAM
COUNTIES, 1860-1900

===========================================================================
1900 1860
------------------------------------------------------------------
Total Total
White Under 10 White Under 10
County Population Years Per Cent Population Years Per Cent
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Otsego 48,793 7,121 14.5 49,950 10,988 22.0
Putnam 13,669 2,332 16.9 13,819 3,333 24.1
------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 62,462 9,453 15.0 63,769 14,321 22.5
===========================================================================

This shows that while in 1860, when the total population was about
64,000, the number of children was about 14,0