Ohio River and the southern boundary of Missouri. The east–west line separated districts that were very sharply distinguished from one another by population, social conditions, and interests, as well as climate.
In large part, Gannett’s proposal restated the 1850 formulations. His Great Valley of the Mississippi corresponds to DeBow’s interior, central, or middle group of States. Gannett’s arrangement evolved into today’s system of groupings, and pointed toward the present system in that it presented a two-tiered approach: five major geographic divisions, counterparts of today’s census regions, and eleven minor geographic divisions; many of the latter correspond to the current groupings of States into census divisions. For instance, Southern North Atlantic is now the Middle Atlantic Division; together with New England, it now comprises the Northeast Region (instead of the North Atlantic Region). The two minor divisions, Northern South Atlantic (the Upper South of colonial times) and Southern South Atlantic, later merged into the South Atlantic Division of today. A later combination grouped the Rocky Mountain and the Basin and Plateau States into the Mountain Division. Table 6-2 lists Gannett’s 1900 arrangement and shows how it evolved into the present system of groupings.
The summary statistics for the 1880 census of agriculture made use of the five major divisions mentioned above. The 1890 and 1900 publications extended the practice to include data on land area and demographic items, such as the geographical distribution of counties and minor civil divisions, as well as city, urban, and rural populations. The introductory text of one 1890 census report considered this fivefold combination as a natural grouping that brought out many characteristic features of the Nation’s different sections. Among these features were economic specialization, the evolution of population concentrations in cities, and the stage of progress. It described the North Atlantic as the manufacturing section, and designated agriculture as the predominant industry of the North Central States. It further characterized the South Atlantic and South Central States as almost entirely agricultural, in contrast to the West, for which the leading industries were agriculture, mining, and grazing. Such perceptions doubtlessly
