 In order to form a no-perfect union. We are a giant organism. The nation. We sustain it. We are sustained by it. We move through it. And we change it. We, the people. America today has over 200 million people. It has been ever since the first shiploads of settlers began arriving almost 400 years ago. 200 years ago, America was organizing itself into a republic of four million people. A nation of farms and scattered settlements in a few cities emerging on the edge of a vast wilderness. Since then, the growing population has spread across the continent in cities and towns from the Atlantic to the Pacific, even out into the Pacific and north to the Arctic. The framers of the constitution were planning a rational and stable government for a nation whose future was for them a dream filled with unknowns. But they counted on growth. To maintain proportional representation in the unchartable future, they required a periodic enumeration of the population. More than 100 years before the invention of the motion picture, it was perceived that a sequence of still pictures could provide a sense of movement, a way to observe a phenomenon that cannot be stopped for analysis. Colossal growth and movement. For 200 years in America, the principal constant has been change. A detailed family portrait. Like an epic home movie, the census is about us. We the people. On April the 1st, 1970, we were 204,765,770. In 1790, we were 4 million. In 10 years between 1960 and 1970, we added six times the population of 1790. As a percentage, our recent growth has been less than in the 19th century, when during many decades the population increased as much as 30%. Yet with a large population base of 1960, even a low growth rate, the second lowest in history produced the second largest numerical increase for a single decade. We are numerous. We are growing. We are moving. Each year, one of every five Americans moves to a new address, to the towns from the farms, from the small towns to the suburbs, from the cities to the suburbs. Growth from migration and natural growth from the birth of babies converge in the urban areas. Almost all our growth is urban. Almost three-quarters of us live in urban areas, in towns of 2,500 or more, in or near cities of 50,000 or more. In our large numbers, we are gathering together. One-fourth of the people live in the 10 largest metropolitan areas. Growth and migration patterns are changing the shape of urban settlements. Slow growth or loss of residential population in the central cities. Rapid growth in the surrounding urbanized areas. More people live in suburbs now than in the densely settled cities. We speak now of the metropolitan area, the city together with its suburbs. Large urban concentrations of population. In these metropolitan areas, the city limit is merely the line between one jurisdiction and another, instead of the boundary between city and countryside. As the edges of the metropolitan areas spread out across the countryside, several may grow together, forming a megalopolis. The largest of these, jokingly called Boss Wash, joins several of America's oldest and biggest cities. Cities formerly distinct and distant from one another, now form nearly 500 miles of virtually continuous urban settlement. A giant super-urban complex, home to one-fifth of the nation's population. Half the population lives within 50 miles of the shoreline. The Atlantic Seaboard. The Great Lakes. The Gulf of Mexico. The Pacific. The people are gathering at the water's edge. The American people are unevenly distributed. Nearly 75% of the population lives on 2% of the land. Unevenly distributed, growing and moving, moving to the urban settlements, moving off the land. In 1970, less than 5% of the population was living on farms, about the same percentage that was living in cities in 1790. In the 10 years before the last census, the farm population declined by 38%, while the whole population grew by 13%. Fewer people are working the land to grow more food. Two-fifths of the nation's counties lost population, mostly farming counties, a pattern spreading down from the northern border through the Great Plains, across the south to the Appalachians. While the whole population grew, and the total rural population remained almost constant in numbers, over 5 million people left the farms in 10 years or gave up farming for a living. This is the face in the farming towns. Some of the towns are closing down. The average farmer now is older. Younger people, people with children, are moving out of the countryside, only half as many farm children in 1970 as in 1960. Staying put when others move. When older people do move, they turn their faces to the sun. 10% of the nation's population is over 65. In Florida, more than 14% are elderly. Go west, young man. Young woman. At any age, go west. Old tradition is a modern trend. The west is the region of greatest growth. Censors showed that California grew by 4.25 million, the largest increase in the nation, the first place from New York since 1810, the most populous state in the Union, helping to pull the center of population farther west. The center of population. America's human center of gravity. The point at which a weightless map of the U.S. would balance if an equal weight were placed where every citizen lived at the time of the decennial census. Starting 23 miles east of Baltimore in 1790, the center of population moved 700 miles west and 60 miles south by 1970 to a farm field near Mascota, Illinois, just short of the Mississippi River. Counties lose and gain. Regions feel the ebb and flow of the unceasing change. 1,400,000 blacks left the South. Once concentrated almost entirely in the South, today just over half of all blacks live in that region. And in the last decade, whites entering outnumbered blacks leaving, giving the South its first net migration gain in many decades. The black population now is more evenly distributed among the many regions, more concentrated in the central cities. 44% of all blacks lived in central cities in 1950, 58% in 1970. In 1960, there were only three cities of over 25,000 with more blacks and whites. In 1970, there were 16. The black population is growing slightly faster than the population as a whole. It was about 11% of the total population in 1970. People in motion, always moving to the cities, to the suburbs, toward the water, moving into the metropolitan settlements. Many are moving toward a better life, better housing. More housing units grew at a faster rate than the population. Housing is less crowded. The number of units with more people than rooms dropped by almost a million. More single people of all ages are establishing their own households a 57% increase in 10 years. The number of people over 65 who are maintaining their own homes by 3,800,000. With more people living in metropolitan areas, housing grows vertically. The number of apartments increased by more than 36%, single family houses by less than 10%. This highly mobile population has turned with greater frequency to mobile homes. The greatest rate of growth for a single category of housing was 170% for trailers and mobile homes. In 1970, more than 1,800,000 families were living in homes that could be moved. We Americans like a home of our own. 63% of all kinds of housing units were owned by their occupants in 1970. 65% of white families own their homes, 42% of blacks. In 1970, the typical house was more expensive to buy and more valuable when selling than the typical house of 10 years before. The median value increased from $11,900 to $17,100, 43% in 10 years. The median rent increased even more, 55%, from $58 to $89. An important factor in the median value in 1970 is the value of new houses. One out of every four housing units in 1970 had been built in the preceding 10 years. Even measured in constant dollars, the typical new house in 1970 was worth more than the typical new house of 1960. In fact, the number of expensive homes is growing very fast. In 1970, four times as many houses valued at over $35,000 as 10 years before. One-third fewer houses worth less than $10,000. But the increase in median value is not only a reflection of the growing number of high-priced houses. It reflects significant improvements and rising standards in the homes of millions of us who have moderate or low incomes. In 1960, almost 17% of all houses lacked basic plumbing. Hot and cold running water, a toilet, and a bathtub or shower. In 1970, only 7% of all housing units lacked these basic facilities. The change has been even more dramatic in the homes of black Americans. In 1960, 40% of all housing units occupied by black families did not have basic plumbing. By 1970, the figure had dropped to 17%. In urban areas, the races are almost equal. The greatest change, the greatest improvement, has been in the rural south, increasing in cost, increasing in value. Better housing reflects our ability to pay for it. During a period when the total population grew by 24 million, the number of people in the low income range declined more than 12 million to just over 27 million. The number of blacks with low incomes declined, but at the same time increased as a percentage of the total of all poor people. Now, 28% of all people in the low income range are black. 8% are of Spanish heritage. But members of these same minorities are increasing their proportions in higher income groups, moving, working and earning a better living. Cennial family portrait shows that by the most obvious yardstick, our mobility is strongly upward. In 1970, the median family income was $9,590, which means that even after 20 years of economic growth, change, inflation, and recessions, the typical family has almost twice the purchasing power that it had in 1950. For individuals, education has long been thought a key to prosperity. And in a reciprocal pattern, increasing prosperity broadens educational opportunities. Children, teenagers, adults, Americans go to school. True illiteracy is rare today. More people are finishing high school. 52% of all people over 25 have a diploma. In 1960, less than 25% were high school graduates. The change is even greater among young adults between 18 and 24, an increase from 63 to 75% for whites and from 38 to 57% for blacks and other racial minorities. More Americans of all races are going to school and staying there longer. College enrollment rose from 3 million in 1960 to 7 million in 1970. These increases suggest that more and more of us will participate more fully in America's economic and technical growth and that we will be able to sustain this growth and development. Moving through time, changing in many ways, housing, income, educational attainment, measurable changes that have an impact on the unmeasurable changes in the quality of our life. Our home movie, our family portrait has no end. The present is passing before the lens, unexposed film waiting for moments yet to come. Still the land of promise always moving.