The order of mortality is as follows, beginning with the lowest : Barnstable, Berkshire, Norfolk, Plymouth, Franklin, Hampshire, Essex, Worcester, Bristol, Dukes, Middlesex, Hampden, Nantucket and Suffolk. The preceding tables show the very marked difference in the death-rate between country and city. Yet it would be erroneous to suppose that this is all due to salubrious surroundings in the one case, and overcrowding in the other. These are very important influences and must have weight in any comparison, but they should not be considered alone. The two populations are not of equal age. There are more children in the cities than in the country in proportion to the whole number of inhabitants. The birth-rate is high in Suffolk and the death-rate corresponds. In Barnstable and Berkshire and Franklin, both are low. More children are born to the poor, and a greater number die from neglect and exposure in the first years of life. Mere fecundity is not proof of prosperity either in the family or the nation. The proportion of children who are brought through the perils of infancy, and who reach maturity, is a better evidence of the existence of normal and healthful conditions. But this is hard to determine in Massachusetts, owing to the migratory and unsettled habits of our people. In the tables which have led to these remarks, Dukes and Nantucket Counties have so small a population altogether, that their percentages for a single year prove nothing. The above table gives the death-rate in our largest cities and towns, for 1870, in their order, and also a comparison with 1865. Such statements are obviously of far greater value in these two years of the census than at any other time. Some of the towns, like Holyoke, have nearly doubled their population in the interval. An improvement in the rate for 1870 is not to be fairly credited to the cities and towns in which it occurred, without also remembering that 1865 was a year of war, and that the rate for the whole State was then 2.06 per. cent. instead of 1.87 per cent. in 1870. Sex. The deaths of males exceeded those of females in 1870 by 101. PROPORTIONS of the Sexes when distinguished in the annual Deaths.-Nineteen Years. |