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Show Rural Population Getting Smaller Except in a very few widely scattered scat-tered and especially favored regions, the farming districts of the United States are loosing population. That is true not only of the strictly strict-ly agricultural territory, but of the little villages which once were the farmers' trading centers. All over the United States, the census returns so far completed tell the same story. The little villages of 500 or so are disappearing. Some of them are aleready down to the dimensions dim-ensions of a filling station and hot dog stand. Almost all of them show a decline in population since 1920. Where have the people gone, who used to live on the farms and in these little country hamlets? To the big cities? all of the big cities show population gains. The biggest cities naturally show biggest gains. But that does not mean that the farmers of the United States are flocking into Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York. They are moving to town, but to the nearby, growing country towns For while the very small villages are mostly getting smaller, the trend of Census returns to date indicates clearly that the medium-sized country coun-try towns, the larger rural communities commun-ities and the small cities, are all growing. The towns that had a thousand or so in 1920 are now mostly in the 1500-2500 class. Towns of 5,000 ten years ago now have from 7,500 to 15,000 inhabitants as a general thing. One of the most interesting in-teresting single groups of facts disclosed dis-closed by Census returns as published publish-ed so far, is the large number of little lit-tle cities which have jumped into the 10,000 class. And the same holds good all along the line. We are all moving into town. But that doesn't mean that we are all becoming be-coming city folks. o |