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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
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