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Show uu , EASTWARD, HO! . ! The United States department of ag-l riculture recently made inquiries as to I the number of persons leaving the farms for tho city and the results were startling. This inquiry also disclosed that the tendency of migration toward the west has changed until the tendency tenden-cy Is toward the east. The New York "World after learning that 35,000 men and boys in New York left the farm to work in the cities and only 11,000 left the cities for tho farms says the conditions give rise to deep concern. "The recent federal census indicates," indi-cates," the World says, "a general shifting of population from west to east in the past ten years, as well as a general movement from country to city and more rapid than theretofore, j After more than a century of steady jprogress westward, the center of population popu-lation is now turning back eastward. "These are facts of - extraordinary import. The country for many decades de-cades has had an increasing proportion propor-tion of population living in cities. But this has proceeded slowly and broadlj and largely out of scientific progress i.i agriculture by which a given amount of labor applied to the land has been made vastly more productive. Lately, however, it has apparently been proceeding pro-ceeding with unparalleled rapidity, and on so sweeping a scale as even to affect af-fect the urban population of the west In favor of the casL "It is not a natural tendency. Its causes are of an arbitrary character. It is a product of the gVeat war and of those interferences with the competitive competi-tive control of industry growing out! of the economic necessities of the war and of government action compelled by these necessities. "But it is here now in the fulness of its great consequences, nnd the problems It imposes as affecting a tolerable tol-erable life iu the cities and their feeding feed-ing are now beginning to impress themselves with overwhelming weight in many directions. "Immediate remedies will have to be found as the sheer force of circumstances circum-stances compels. But no general and effective remedy can be found short of removal of restraints upon competi live industry imposed by war conditions, condi-tions, whether imposed by government or by capitalistic combinations or by an undue growth in the power and exactions ex-actions of organized labor in the cities. cit-ies. nn . |