The Census Bureau. of the . United States has just issued
some tables which have a direct bearing on a pressing English question. The urban population of the Union has grown in the ten years ending 1890 from 10,700,000 to 17,290,000,—an • increase of more than 60 per cent. This rate of increase far exceeds that of the whole country, and can be explained only by one of two suppositions. Either the whole of the immi- gration from abroad goes to the cities, or the cities are draw- ing in the country population. Americans believe that the latter is the case, and that the more energetic and better cultivated of the fifty-acre freeholders greatly prefer city life, with its thicker society, more frequent amusement, and better chances. We recommend that fact to the Daily News, as also the statistics of Canada, where the population hardly increases, though every one can obtain land at will. The truth is, that agriculture offers to labourers and small freeholders alike an exhausting, soli- tary, and monotonous life of labour, for rewards which are not dependent upon either energy, industry, or skill. The hop-growers of England have all those qualities, and capital besides, and this year expected a bumper crop. Then it rained for a month on end, and those who cleared expenses reckoned themselves fortunate. The defect is inherent in the business itself, and its unalterable conditions, not in the method of distributing the profits which so seldom come. That is no argument against a better method ; but no method whatever will make educated men love field-work.
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