What is a City?—The poet Cowper once said that “God made the country and man made the town”, a remark which was not intended to flatter the cities. Nor is there any reason why life in a crowded community should particularly appeal to poets although it may have a strong fascination for more worldly-minded men. A large body of people living closely together, a place of busy streets and tall buildings, a huge, noisy, jostling throng—that is the customary notion of an American city, and on the whole it is not far wide of the facts. Not all cities, however, are big, busy, and congested. In the entire United States there are today about a thousand places which call themselves cities, yet more than half of them are places of less than fifteen thousand people. In Massachusetts no place can become a city until it has at least ten thousand people; but in Oklahoma the figure is two thousand and in Kansas only two hundred. A city may be anything, therefore, from a rural hamlet with only a few hundred people to a great metropolitan community with several millions. Size or population are not the things that determine cityhood. A place is a city if it has been so incorporated and possesses a city charter. So far as its government is concerned, it cannot be called a city, no matter how populous it may be, unless it has been given a charter by authority of the state.[[65]] In the West the practice has been to grant such charters to relatively small places; in the East the requirements are more strict.
THE GROWTH OF AMERICAN CITIES
The table and diagram on the reverse of this page will serve to make clear the phenomenal growth of American cities during the past hundred and thirty years. In 1820 only one person in twenty lived in cities and towns of over 8,000 population; today nine persons in every twenty live in these communities. The population of the whole country has been growing steadily during the past hundred years; but the cities have been increasing even more rapidly. These figures should be studied in connection with the discussion on pages [184-186].
| —Population in Places of 8,000 Inhabitants or More: 1790-1920. | ||||
| PLACES OF 8,000 INHABITANTS OR MORE. | ||||
| CENSUS YEAR. | Total Population. | Population. | Number of places. | Per cent of total population. |
| 1920 | 105,710,620 | 46,307,640 | 924 | 43.8 |
| 1910 | 91,972,256 | 35,570,334 | 768 | 38.7 |
| 1900 | 75,994,575 | 25,018,335 | 547 | 32.9 |
| 1890 | 62,947,714 | 18,244,239 | 445 | 29.0 |
| 1880 | 50,155,783 | 11,365,698 | 285 | 22.7 |
| 1870 | 38,558,371 | 8,071,875 | 226 | 20.9 |
| 1860 | 31,443,321 | 5,072,256 | 141 | 16.1 |
| 1850 | 23,191,876 | 2,897,586 | 85 | 12.5 |
| 1840 | 17,069,453 | 1,453,994 | 44 | 8.5 |
| 1830 | 12,866,020 | 864,509 | 26 | 6.7 |
| 1820 | 9,638,453 | 475,135 | 13 | 4.9 |
| 1810 | 7,239,881 | 356,920 | 11 | 4.9 |
| 1800 | 5,308,483 | 210,873 | 6 | 4.0 |
| 1790 | 3,929,214 | 131,472 | 6 | 3.3 |
Population in Places of 8,000 Inhabitants or More at
Each Census: 1790-1920.]
Why American cities have grown so rapidly.
The Phenomenal Growth of Cities.—The remarkable drift of population into the cities has already been pointed out. It is one of the most striking social facts in American history during the past hundred years.[[66]] In the days when the national constitution was framed there were only eight or ten places that could be called cities and even these were, with one or two exceptions, nothing but good-sized towns. New York, the largest of them, had a population of less than 50,000; it has grown a hundred-fold since that time. In Washington’s day no country had as many as fifty cities and the largest city in the world, London, had less than a million people. The cities counted for very little in the early days of the Republic; they then contained less than five per cent of the national population. During the course of the nineteenth century, however, cities sprang into existence everywhere; a large part of the immigration poured into them; the development of industry and commerce built them up; and today about half the people of the United States reside in cities of all sizes. There are now more cities in America than in any other country and more large cities. We have twelve great centers with populations exceeding half a million,[[67]] while the entire British empire (including India, Canada, and Australia) has only ten; Germany has only four and France has only two. At the present rate of progress the United States in 1950 will probably contain more large cities than all the rest of the world put together. The causes of this remarkable growth have been indicated elsewhere and there is no need to repeat them. Factories, railroads, and steamships have been the great factors in this urban expansion.