The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 65, July 1961 - April, 1962 Page: 346

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

grew. According to the census figures of g 9o, the rural popula-
tion had increased the preceding decade in every county in the
heartland except in Erath County. Table 6 shows Erath County
with a decrease of 2,983 rural inhabitants, but reference to Table
5 indicates that in the 1910o census 2,756 people were classified as
urban for the first time. Therefore, the county population de-
creased only 277 inhabitants during the previous decade. Special
emphasis is placed upon this slight decrease, however, since this
is the first indication of the pending rural decline.
Each time an urban area was formed, the inhabitants of the
new urban center were deducted from the county's rural popula-
tion. The increase in urban living had begun to take definite form
by 1900oo, but this trend was culturally healthy only as long as the
number of rural inhabitants remained reasonably stable. As the
heartland economy broadened and trade proportionately in-
creased, more people came into the province, birth rates continued
to be high, and urban areas increased in importance. The im-
provement of railroads and highways, the invention and populari-
zation of the motor car, the demand for agrarian products with
the coming of war, and the mechanization of agriculture were
all behind-the-scenes developments which were mobilizing for a
great social and economic upheaval. Cotton, livestock, peanuts,
TABLE 7
URBAN-RURAL RELATIONSHIPS IN THE
HEARTLAND, 19oo-1960so
Total Total Urban Total Rural Percent
Year Population Inhabitants Inhabitants Urban
1900 200,225 11,351 188,874 5.7
1910 236,501 26,733 209,768 11.3
1920 265,341 81,188 184,153 30.5
1930 220,175 64,333 155,845 29.3
1940 216,294 72,569 143,725 33.5
1950 193,554 93,232 100,322 48.2
1960 181,213 96,709 84,504 53.4
soCalculated from the Fourteenth Census of the United States: z92o, Population,
I, 172-174; Fifteenth Census of the United States: 193o, Population, 10o58-o106; Seven-
teenth Census of the United States: X95o, Population, I, Pt. 43, pp. 13-16; and U. S.
Census of Population: 96o, Number of Inhabitants, Texas, Pt. 45, PP. 24-27.

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