nd a sluggish contentment
rather than ambition is characteristic of the older rural sections; in
newer districts ambition to push ahead is more common, and prosperity
and an air of opulence are not unusual.

106. =The Composition of Rural Communities.=--In an analysis of
population it is proper to consider its composition and its manner of
growth. In making a survey or taking a census of a community there are
included at least statistics as to age, sex, number and size of
families, degree of kinship, race parentage, and occupations. Records
of age, sex, and size of family show the tendencies of a community as
to growth or race suicide; kinship and race parentage indicate whether
population is homogeneous; and occupations indicate the place that
agriculture holds in a particular section of country. By a comparative
study of statistics it is easy to determine whether a community is
advancing, retrograding, or standing still, and what its position is
relative to its neighbors; also to find out whether or not its
occupations and characteristics are changing.

107. =Manner of Growth.=--The manner of growth of a community is by
natural excess of births over deaths, and by immigration of persons
from outside. As long as the former condition obtains, population is
homogeneous, and the community is conservative in customs and beliefs;
when immigration is extensive, and more especially when it goes on at
the same time with a declining birth-rate and a considerable
emigration of the native element, the population is becoming
heterogeneous, and the customs and interests of the people are growing
continually more divergent. The immigration of an earlier day was from
one American community to another, or from northern Europe, but rural
communities East and West are feeling the effects of the large foreign
immigration of the last decade from southern and eastern Europe and
from Asia.

108. =Decline of the Rural Population.=--The rural exodus to the
cities is even more impressive and more serious in its consequences
than the foreign influx into the country, though both are dynamic in
their effects. This exodus is partly a matter of numbers and partly of
quality. A distinction must be made first between the relative loss
and the actual loss. The rural population in places of less than
twenty-five hundred persons is steadily falling behind in proportion
to the urban population in the country at large. There are many
localities where