SPARSENESS • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Sparseness

... people are sure to prefer when they have tried it under favourable conditions. In the West the hostile conditions against which it has to contend are either the recent existence of negro slavery and the ingrained prejudice in favour of the Virginia method, as in Missouri; or simply the sparseness of population, as in Nebraska. Time will evidently remove the latter obstacle, and probably the former also. It is very significant that in Missouri, which began so lately as 1879 to erect township governments under a local option law similar ...

— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske