Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE CHARACTER OP CITY POPULATIONS1 Migration of population. While in the past the main cause of the development of urban communities is to be found in the migration of persons from the rural districts to places specially well fitted for the pursuit of commerce, trade and industry, it must not be forgotten that city as well as rural populations propagate the human race. An important element in all city populations is to be found in those persons who have been born 'and brought up in the city. The proportion of such people depends, however, in large measure on the sanitary conditions of the city. If the conditions in city life generally or in a given city are conducive to human mortality it may well be that city life generally or the life of some city in particular may be of such a bad character that the death rate is higher than the birth rate. If that is the case the city is dependent upon migration to it, not only for its increase in population but as well for its continued existence as a city. We may say that this was the condition of most cities in the European world prior to the opening of the nineteenth century. Thus it is said that in London in the forty years from 1603-1644 there were 363,935 burials and 330,747 christenings.2 "A German student who investigated the church records of baptisms and burials in several German cities came to the conclusion that on the average there were eighty or ninety births to one hundred deaths in the period from 1550-1750. "s The improvement in the sanitary conditions of cities in the nineteenth century due to the discoveries of medical science applied by a more efficient municipal government have, however, brought it about that many cities have at the present time a higher birth than death rate. Indeed, Dr. Weber sta...