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A New Nation
(1776-1830)



Growing Cities


Growing Cities
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   high interest, readability grades 4 to 5
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   4.06

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    cholera, theaters, early, jobs, people, country, often, gravel, movement, dangerous, during, fashion, kill, percent, person, lived
     content words:    United States


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Growing Cities
By Cathy Pearl
  

1     In the early 1800s many people lived in the country. Most of the people were farmers. They needed more land to grow crops. The farmers would grow crops during the year. Then they would send the crops to the cities. People in the cities would sell the crops or send them to other parts of the world.
 
2     Many people began to leave the farms when factories were started. They wanted to work in the new factories. Most of the time, factories were in or near a city. Many times cities would start around a new factory. The movement of people from farms to the cities was called urbanization.
 
3     This did not happen quickly. In 1800, only six percent of the country lived in cities. Fifty years later only fifteen percent lived in cities. It wasn't until the 1900s that more people lived in cities than on farms.
 
4     These cities were a lot different than the cities in the United States today. They were very small. The buildings were not very tall. They might only have three or four stories.

Paragraphs 5 to 13:
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