JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
I'm reading Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove now, again (see yesterday's post on this, here), experiencing that brittle silence spacing the dialog of long, open, open places. That's probably because the area where we start out in the novel is fairly flat land filled with tough scrub, and not many people. The land wasn't necessarily quiet--anyone hiking in bog country or high desert knows that there is plenty of life going on around you, and its just that the sound that gets made in its living doesn't have much to bounce on, and so the sky swallows most of it. But the sound is definitely there--but in general in the country around Lonesome Dove there weren't many people, either.
Where Was Everyone? (1870)
-
State
Area/Square miles
Population
Persons /Square Mile
Arkansas
52,198
485,000
9
Nebraska
75,995
123,000
1
New York
47,000
4,388,000
9
Massachusetts
7,800
1,456,000
186
Texas
274,000
818,000
3
Arizona
113,000
9,600
.08
Colorodo
104,500
39,600
.38
Montana
143,000
10,306
.14
New Mexico
121,000
90,500
.76
Wyoming
97,000
3,800
.09
Lonesome Dove takes place right about at the time of the U.S. Centennial, and in 1870 there were about 38.5 million people living on 3.6 million miles of America, making it about 10 persons per square mile, nation/territory-wide. Not many of them lived in the area occupied by the Lonesome Dove novels.
People lived shoulder-to-shoulder in places like New York and Massachusetts, but in Texas, where less than 1% of the country lived, there were fewer than 3 people per square mile—and there were a lot of miles. For example, you could squeeze six Massachusetts into New York, and six New Yorks would fit into Texas. Wyoming was another matter still—there was only 1 person for every 10 square miles. On this scale, Massachusetts' 78,000 square miles would have to be stretched out to 1 million square miles to allow its population to be as spread out as Wyoming’s.
The combined populations of Arizona, Colorado, Montana and Wyoming would be about 63,000, which is 20% less than the total population of the city I live in here in Asheville, North Carolina--and that's about 1/10th of the total square miles of the state of NC, which is about 1/10th the square miles (457,000) of those four western states combined, which is an interesting Powers-of-Ten observation about wide-open unpeople spaces in Lonesome Dove country in 1876.
And what were people doing for work, back then, in 1876? Here's an interesting bit of tabulated data that can give us some decent clue about what jobs were available (and to whom), and how many folks worked in that category:
|
Occupation |
Men |
Women |
|
Apiarists |
136 |
0 |
|
Farmers & planters |
2,955,030 |
22,681 |
|
Stock drovers |
3,181 |
0 |
|
Stock raisers |
6,588 |
30 |
|
actors |
1361 |
692 |
|
architects |
2,016 |
1 |
|
Barbers & hairdressers |
22,756 |
1,179 |
|
Authors & lecturers |
343 |
115 |
|
Clergy |
43,807 |
67 |
|
Dentists |
7,815 |
24 |
|
Domestic servants |
108,380 |
867,354 |
|
Journalists |
5,251 |
35 |
|
Restaurant keepers |
34,452 |
643 |
|
Midwives |
0 |
1,186 |
|
Lawyers |
40,731 |
5 |
|
Teachers |
42,775 |
84,047 |
|
Barkeepers |
14,292 |
70 |
|
Traders in Books & Stationery |
3,337 |
55 |
|
Traders in ice |
1,463 |
1 |
|
Undertakers |
1,976 |
20 |
|
Butchers |
44,354 |
0 |
|
Macaroni makers |
27 |
2 |
|
Oyster Packers |
329 |
114 |
|
Screw Makers |
434 |
346 |
|
Whip makers |
491 |
118 |
|
Toll gate keeper |
2,047 |
246 |
[Source: Statistical Abstracts of the United States, 1870.]
This is just a snapshot of 1870's jobs, of course, but it is interesting to see that there were about the same number of clergy/teachers/lawyers and butchers, and that the percent of female barbers was so surprisingly high. Of course there are no figures for "cowboy", with the "c" Capitalized or not, though there might be a number hidden under some dust in the "agricultural employment/ranch" section of the census reports. That number is destined to be low. And invisible.
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