The Influx of Population into Large Towns.
§ 1. Movements of Population between City and Country. The growth of
large cities is so closely related to the problems of poverty as to
deserve a separate treatment. The movements of population form a group
of facts more open than most others to precise measurement, and from
them much light is thrown on the condition of the working classes. That
the towns are growing at the expense of the country, is a commonplace to
which we ought to seek to attach a more definite meaning.
We may trace the inflow of country-born people into the towns by looking
either at the statistics of towns, or of rural districts. But first we
ought to bear in mind one fact. Quite apart from any change in
proportion of population, there is an enormous interchange constantly
taking place between adjoining counties and districts. The general
fluidity of population has been of course vastly increased by new
facilities of communication and migration; persons are less and less
bound down to the village or county in which they were born. So we find
that in England and Wales, only 739 out of each 1000 persons were living
in their native county in 1901. In some London districts it is reckoned
that more than one quarter of the inhabitants change their address each
year. So that when we are told that in seven large Scotch towns only 524
out of each 1000 are natives, and that in Middlesex only 35 per cent. of
the male adult population are Middlesex by birth, we are not thereby
enabled to form any conclusion as to the growth of towns.
To arrive at any useful result we must compare the inflow with the
outflow. Most of the valuable information we possess on this point
applies directly to London but the same forces which are operating in
London, will be found to be at work with more or less intensity in other
centres of population in proportion to their size. Comparing the inflow
of London with its outflow, we find that in 1881 nearly twice as many
strangers were living in London as Londoners were living outside; in
other words, that London was gaining from the country at the rate of
more than 10,000 per annum. So far as London itself is concerned, the
last two censuses show a cessation of the flow, but the enormous growth
of Middlesex outside the metropolitan boundaries indicates a continuance
of the centripetal tendency.
Now what does London do with this increase? Is it spread evenly over the
surface of the great city?
Certainly not. And here we reach a point which has a great significance
for those interested in East London. It is clearly shown that none of
this gain goes to swell the numbers of East London. Many individual
strangers of course go there, but the outflow from East London towards
the suburban parts more than compensates the inflow. By comparing the
population of East London in 1901 with that in 1881, it is found that
the increase is far less than it ought to be, if we add the excess of
births over deaths. How is this? The answer is not far to seek, and
stamps with fatal significance one aspect of Poverty, namely,
overcrowding. East London does not gain so fast as other parts, because
it will not hold any more people. It has reached what is termed
"saturation point." Introduce strangers, and they can only stay on
condition that they push out, and take the place of, earlier residents.
So we find in all districts of large towns, where poverty lies thickest,
the inflow is less than the outflow. The great stream of incomers goes
to swell the population of parts not hitherto overcrowded, thus ever
increasing the area of dense city population. Districts like Bethnal
Green and Mile End are found to show the smallest increase, while
outlying districts like West Ham grow at a prodigious pace.
§ 2. Rate of Migration from Rural Districts.--But perhaps the most
instructive point of view from which to regard the absorption of country
population by the towns is not from inside but from outside.
Confining our attention for the present to migration from the country to
the town, and leaving the foreign immigration for separate treatment, we
find that the large majority of incomers to London are from agricultural
counties, such as Kent, Bucks, Herts, Devon, Lincoln, and not from
counties with large manufacturing centres of their own, like Yorkshire,
Lancashire, and Cheshire. The great manufacturing counties contribute
very slightly to the growth of London. While twelve representative
agricultural counties furnished sixteen per 1000 of the population of
London in 1881, twelve representative manufacturing counties supplied no
more than two-and-a-half per 1000.
Respecting the rate of the decline of agricultural population
exaggerated statements are often made. If we take the inhabitants of
rural sanitary districts, and of urban districts below 10,000 as the
rural population, we shall find that between 1891 and 1901 the growth in
the rural districts is 5.3 per cent. as compared with 15.8 per cent. for
the centres of population. Even if the urban standard be placed at a
lower point, 5000, there is still an increase of 3.5 per cent. in the
rural population. If, however, we eliminate the "home" counties and
other rural districts round the large centres of population, largely
used for residential purposes, and turn to agricultural England, we
shall find that it shows a positive decline in rural population. In the
period 1891-1901 no fewer than 18 English and Welsh counties show a
decrease of rural inhabitants, taking the higher limit of urban
population. This has been going on with increasing rapidity during the
last forty years. Whereas, in 1861, 37.7 per cent. of the population
were living in the country, in 1901 the proportion has sunk to 23 per
cent.
What these figures mean is that almost the whole of the natural increase
in country population is being gradually sucked into city life. Not
London alone, of course, but all the large cities have been engaged in
this work of absorption. Everywhere the centripetal forces are at work.
The larger the town the stronger the power of suction, and the wider the
area over which the attraction extends. There are three chief
considerations which affect the force with which the attraction of a
large city acts upon rural districts. The first is distance. By far the
largest quantity of new-comers into London are natives of Middlesex,
Kent, Bucks, and what are known as "the home counties." As we pass
further North and West, the per-centage gradually though not quite
regularly declines. The numbers from Durham and Northumberland on the
one hand, and from Devon and Somerset on the other are much larger than
those from certain nearer counties, such as Stafford, Yorkshire, and
Lancaster. The chief determinate of the force of attraction, distance
from the centre, is in these cases qualified by two other
considerations. In the case of Durham and Northumberland a large
navigable seaboard affords greater facility and cheapness of transport,
an important factor in the mobility of labour. In the case of Devon and
Somerset the absence of the counter-attraction of large provincial
cities drives almost the whole of its migratory folk to London, whereas
in Yorkshire and Lancashire and the chief Midland manufacturing counties
the attraction of their own industrial centres acts more powerfully in
their immediate neighbourhood than the magic of London itself. Thus, if
we were to take the map of England and mark it so as to represent the
gravitation towards cities, we should find that every remotest village
was subject to a number of weaker or stronger, nearer or more distant,
forces, which were helping to draw off its rising population into the
eddy of city life. If we examined in detail a typical agricultural
county, we should probably find that while its one or two considerable
towns of 40,000 or 50,000 inhabitants were growing at something above
the average rate for the whole country, the smaller towns of 5000 to
10,000 were only just managing to hold their own, the smallest towns and
large villages were steadily declining, while the scattered agricultural
population remained almost stationary. For it is the small towns and the
villages that suffer most, for reasons which will shortly appear.
§ 3. Effects of Agricultural Depression.--We have next to ask what is
the nature of this attractive force which drains the country to feed the
city population? What has hitherto been spoken of as a single force will
be seen to be a complex of several forces, different in kind, acting
conjointly to produce the same result.
The first readily suggests itself couched under the familiar phrase,
Agricultural Depression. It is needless here to enlarge on this big and
melancholy theme. It is evident that what is called the law of
Diminishing Return to Labour in Agriculture, the fact that every
additional labourer, upon a given surface, beyond a certain sufficient
number, will be less and less profitably employed, while the indefinite
expansion of manufacture will permit every additional hand to be
utilized so as to increase the average product of each worker, would of
itself suffice to explain why in a fairly thickly populated country like
England, young labourers would find it to their interest to leave the
land and seek manufacturing work in the cities. This would of itself
explain why the country population might stand still while the city
grew. When to this natural tendency we add the influence of the vast
tracts of virgin, or cheaply cultivated soil, brought into active
competition with English agriculture by the railways and steamships
which link us with distant lands in America, Australia, and Asia, we
have a fully adequate explanation of the main force of the tide in the
movement of population. After a country has reached a certain stage in
the development of its resources, the commercial population must grow
more quickly than the agricultural, and the larger the outside area open
to supply agricultural imports the faster the change thus brought about
in the relation of city and rural population.
§ 4. Nature of the Decline of Rural Population.--It has been shown that
the absolute reduction in the number of those living in rural districts
is very small. If, however, we take the statistics of farmers and farm-
labourers in these same districts we often find a very considerable
decline. The real extent of the decline of agriculture is somewhat
concealed by the habit of including in the agricultural population a
good many people not engaged in work of agriculture. The number of
retail shopkeepers, railway men and others concerned with the transport
of goods, domestic servants, teachers, and others not directly occupied
in the production of material wealth, has considerably increased of late
years. So too, not every form of agriculture has declined. While farmers
and labourers show a decrease, market-gardeners show a large increase,
and there seem to be many more persons living in towns who cultivate a
bit of land in the country as a subsidiary employment.
Taken as a whole the absolute fall off in the number of those working
upon the soil is not large. The decline of small country industries is
much more considerable. Here another law of industrial motion comes in,
the rapid tendency of manufacture towards centralization in the towns,
which we have discussed in the last chapter. Here we are concerned only
with its effect in stamping out small rural industries. The growth of
the railway has been the chief agent in the work. Wherever the railroad
has penetrated a country it has withered the ancient cottage industries
of our land. It is true that even before the time of railways the
development of machinery had in large measure destroyed the spinning and
weaving trades, which in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and elsewhere had given
employment to large numbers of country families. The railway, and the
constant application of new machinery have completed this work of
destruction, and have likewise abolished a number of small handicrafts,
such as hand-stitched boots, and lace, which flourished in western and
midland districts, Nor is this all. The same potent forces have
transferred to towns many branches of work connected indirectly with
agricultural pursuits; country smiths, brickmakers, sawyers, turners,
coopers, wheelwrights, are rapidly vanishing from the face of the
country.
§ 5. Attractions of the Town, Economic and Social. The concrete form in
which the industrial forces, which we have described, appeal to the
dull-headed rustic is the attraction of higher wages. An elaborate
comparison of towns and country wages is not required. It is enough to
say that labourer's wages in London and other large cities are some 50
per cent, higher than the wages of agricultural labourers in most parts
of England, and the wages of skilled labour show a similar relation.
Besides the actual difficulty of getting agricultural employment in many
parts, improved means of knowledge, and of cheap transport, constantly
flaunt this offer of higher wages before the eyes of the more
discontented among agricultural workers. It is true that if wages are
higher in London, the cost of living is also higher, and the conditions
of life and work are generally more detrimental to health and happiness;
but these drawbacks are more often realized after the fatal step has
been taken than before.
Along with the concrete motive of higher wages there come other inherent
attractions of town life.
"The contagion of numbers, the sense of something going on, the theatres
and music-halls, the brilliantly-lighted streets and busy crowds"[18]
have a very powerful effect on the dawning intelligence of the rustic.
The growing accessibility of towns brings these temptations within the
reach of all. These social attractions probably contain more evil than
good, and act with growing force on the restless and reckless among our
country population. The tramp and the beggar find more comfort and more
gain in the towns. The action of indiscriminate and spasmodic charity,
which still prevails in London and other large centres of riches, is
responsible in no small measure for the poverty and degradation of city
slums.
"The far-reaching advertisement of irresponsible charity acts as a
powerful magnet. Whole sections of the population are demoralized, men
and women throwing down their work right and left in order to qualify
for relief; while the conclusion of the whole matter is intensified
congestion of the labour market--angry bitter feeling for the
insufficiency of the pittance, or rejection of the claim." So writes
Miss Potter of the famous Mansion House Relief Funds.
It is easy to see how the worthless element from our villages, the
loafer, the shiftless, the drunkard, the criminal, naturally gravitates
towards its proper place as part of the "social wreckage" of our cities.
But the size of this element must not be exaggerated. It forms a
comparatively small fraction of the whole. Our city criminal, our city
loafer, is generally home-grown, and is not supplied directly from the
country. If it were true that only the worthless portion of our country
population passed into our cities to perish in the struggle for
existence, which is so fatal in city life, we should on the whole have
reason to congratulate ourselves. But this is not so. The main body of
those who pass into city life are in fact the cream of the native
population of the country, drawn by advantages chiefly economic. They
consist of large numbers of vigorous young men, mostly between the age
of twenty and twenty-five, who leave agriculture for manufacture, or
move into towns owing to displacement of handicrafts by wholesale
manufacture.
§ 6. Effect of the Change on National Health.--This decay of country
life, however much we may regret it, seems under present industrial
conditions inevitable. Nor is it altogether to be regretted or
condemned. The movement indisputably represents a certain equalization
of advantages economic, educational, and social. The steady workman who
moves into the town generally betters himself from the point of view of
immediate material advantages.
But in regarding the movement as a whole a much more serious question
confronts us. What is the net result upon the physical well-being of the
nation of this drafting of the abler and better country folk into the
towns? Let the death-rate first testify. In 1902 the death-rate for the
whole rural population was 13.7 per 1000, that of the whole urban
population 17.8. Now it is not the case that town life is necessarily
more unhealthy than country life to any considerable extent. There are
well-to-do districts of London, whole boroughs, such as Hampstead, where
the death-rate is considerably lower than the ordinary rural rate. The
weight of city mortality falls upon the poor.
Careful statistics justify the conclusion that the death-rate of an
average poor district in London, Liverpool, or Glasgow, is quite double
that of the average country district which is being drained to feed the
city. We now see what the growth of town population, and the decay of
the country really means. It means in the first place that each year
brings a larger proportion of the nation within reach of the higher rate
of mortality, by taking them from more healthy and placing them under
less healthy conditions. In the case of the lower classes of workers who
gravitate to London, it means putting them in a place where the chance
of death in a given year is doubled for them. And remember, this higher
death-rate is applied not indiscriminately, but to selected subjects. It
is the young, healthy, vigorous blood of the country which is exposed to
these unhealthy conditions. A pure Londoner of the third generation,
that is, one whose grandparents as well as his parents were born in
London, is very seldom found. It is certain that nearly all the most
effective vital energy given out in London work, physical and
intellectual alike, belongs to men whose fathers were country bred, if
they were not country born themselves. In kinds of work where pure
physical vigour play an important part, this is most strikingly
apparent. The following statistics bearing on the London police force
were obtained by Mr. Llewellyn Smith in 1888--
London born. Country born. Total.
Metropolitan Police 2,716 10,908 13,624
City " 194 698 892
Railway men, carriers, omnibus-drivers, corn and timber porters, and
those in whose work physique tells most, are all largely drawn from the
country. Nor is the physical deterioration of city life to be merely
measured by death-rates. Many town influences, which do not appreciably
affect mortality, distinctly lower the vitality, which must be taken as
the physical measure of the value of life. The denizens of city slums
not only die twice as fast as their country cousins, but their health
and vigour is less during the time they live.
A fair consideration of these facts discloses something much more
important than a mere change in social and industrial conditions. Linked
with this change we see a deterioration of the physique of the race as a
distinct factor in the problem of city poverty. This is no vague
speculation, but a strongly-supported hypothesis, which deserves most
serious attention. Dr. Ogle, who has done much work in elucidation of
this point, sums up in the following striking language--
"The combined effect of this constantly higher mortality in the towns,
and of the constant immigration into it of the pick of the rural
population, must clearly be a gradual deterioration of the whole,
inasmuch as the more energetic and vigorous members of the community are
consumed more rapidly than the rest of the population. The system is one
which leads to the survival of the unfittest."
Thus the city figures as a mighty vampire, continually sucking the
strongest blood of the country to keep up the abnormal supply of energy
it has to give out in the excitement of a too fast and unwholesome life.
Whether the science of the future may not supply some decentralizing
agency, which shall reverse the centralizing force of modern industry,
is not a wholly frivolous speculation to suggest. Some sanguine
imaginations already foresee the time when those great natural forces,
the economical use of which has compelled men and women to crowd into
factories in great cities, may be distributable with such ease and
cheapness over the whole surface of the land as no longer to require
that close local relation which means overcrowding in work and in home
life. If science could do this it would confer upon humanity an
advantage far less equivocal than that which belongs to the present
reign of iron and steam.
§ 7. The Extent of Foreign Immigration.--So much for the inflow from the
country districts. But there is another inflow which is drawing close
attention, the inflow of cheap foreign labour into our towns. Here again
we have first to guard against some exaggeration. It is not true that
German, Polish, and Russian Jews are coming over in large battalions to
steal all the employment of the English working-man, by under-selling
him in the labour-market. In the first place, it should be noted that
the foreigners of England, as a whole, bear a smaller proportion to the
total population than in any other first-class European state. In 1901
the foreigners were 76 in 10,000 of the population; that is a good deal
less than one per cent. Our numbers as a nation are not increased by
immigration. On the contrary, between 1871 and 1901 we lost considerably
by emigration.[19] Even London, the centre of attraction to foreigners,
does not contain nearly so large a per-centage of foreigners as any
other great capital. The census gave 3 per cent. as the proportion of
foreigners, excluding those born in England of foreign parents. Though
this figure is perhaps too low, the true proportion cannot be very
large. It is not the number, but the distribution and occupation of the
foreign immigrants, that make them an object of so much solicitude. The
borough of Stepney contains no less than 40 per cent. of the foreign-
born population of London, the foreigners increasing from 15,998 in 1881
to 54,310 in 1901. At present 182 out of every 1000 in this district are
foreigners. The proportion is also very high in Holborn, Westminster,
Marylebone, Bethnal Green, and St Pancras. The Report of the Royal
Commission on Alien Immigration, 1902, states "that the greatest evils
produced by the Alien Immigrants here are the overcrowding caused by
them in certain districts of London, and the consequent displacement of
the native population." The concentration of the immigrant question is
attested by the fact that in 1901 no less than 48 per cent. of the total
foreign population were resident in six metropolitan boroughs, and in
the three cities of Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds. While a
considerable number of them are Germans, French, and Italians, attracted
here by better industrial conditions in trades for which they have some
special aptitude, a greatly increasing proportion are Russian and Polish
Jews, driven to immigrate partly by political and religious persecution,
partly for industrial ends, and feeding the unskilled labour-market in
certain manufactures of our great cities.
§ 8. The Jew as an Industrial Competitor.--Looking at these foreigners
as individuals, there is much to be said in their favour. They do not
introduce a lower morality into the quarters where they settle, as the
Chinese are said to do; nor are they quarrelsome and law-breaking, like
the low-class Italians who swarm into America. Their habits, so far as
cleanliness is concerned, are perhaps not desirable, but the standard of
the native population of Whitechapel is not sensitively high. For the
most part, and this is true especially of the Jews, they are steady,
industrious, quiet, sober, thrifty, quick to learn, and tolerably
honest. From the point of view of the old Political Economy, they are
the very people to be encouraged, for they turn out the largest quantity
of wealth at the lowest cost of production. If it is the chief end for a
nation to accumulate the largest possible stock of material wealth, it
is evident that these are the very people we require to enable us to
achieve our object.
But if we consider it is sound national policy to pay regard to the
welfare of all classes engaged in producing this wealth, we may regard
this foreign immigration in quite another light. The very virtues just
enumerated are the chief faults we have to find with the foreign Jew.
Just because he is willing and able to work so hard for so little pay,
willing to undertake any kind of work out of which he can make a living,
because he can surpass in skill, industry, and adaptability the native
Londoner, the foreign Jew is such a terrible competitor. He is the
nearest approach to the ideal "economic" man, the "fittest" person to
survive in trade competition. Admirable in domestic morality, and an
orderly citizen, he is almost void of social morality. No compunction or
consideration for his fellow-worker will keep him from underselling and
overreaching them; he acquires a thorough mastery of all the
dishonourable tricks of trade which are difficult to restrain by law;
the superior calculating intellect, which is a national heritage, is
used unsparingly to enable him to take advantage of every weakness,
folly, and vice of the society in which he lives.
§ 9. Effect of Foreign Competition.--One other quality he has in common
with the mass of poor foreigners who compete in the London labour
market--he can live on less than the Englishman. What Mrs Webb says of
the Polish Jew, is in large measure true of all cheap foreign
labour--"As industrial competitor, the Polish Jew is fettered by no
definite standard of life; it rises and falls with his opportunities; he
is not depressed by penury, and he is not demoralized by gain." The
fatal significance of this is evident. We have seen that notwithstanding
a general rise in the standard of comfort of the mass of labourers,
there still remains in all our cities a body of labouring men and women
engaged in doing ill-paid and irregular work for wages which keep them
always on the verge of starvation. Now consider what it means for these
people to have brought into their midst a number of competitors who can
live even more cheaply than they can live, and who will consent to toil
from morning to night for whatever they can get. These new-comers are
obviously able, in their eagerness for work, to drive down the rate of
wages even below what represents starvation-point for the native worker.
The insistence of the poorer working-classes, under the stimulus of new-
felt wants, the growing enlightenment of public opinion, have slowly and
gradually won, even for the poorer workers in English cities, some small
advance in material comfort, some slight expansion in the meaning of the
term "necessaries of life." Turn a few shiploads of Polish Jews upon any
of these districts, and they will and must in the struggle for life
destroy the whole of this. Remember it is not merely the struggle of too
many workers competing on equal terms for an insufficient quantity of
work. That is terrible enough. But when the struggle is between those
accustomed to a higher, and those accustomed to a lower, standard of
life, the latter can obviously oust the former, and take their work.
Just as a base currency drives out of circulation a pure currency, so
does a lower standard of comfort drive out a higher one. This is the
vital question regarding foreign immigration which has to be faced.
Nor is it merely a question of the number of these foreigners. The
inflow of a comparatively small number into a neighbourhood where much
of the work is low-skilled and irregular, will often produce an effect
which seems quite out of proportion to the actual number of the
invaders. Where work is slack and difficult to get, a very small
addition of low-living foreigners will cause a perceptible fall in the
entire wages of the neighbourhood in the employments which their
competition affects. It is true that the Jew does not remain a low-
skilled labourer for starvation wages. Beginning at the bottom of the
ladder, he rises by his industry and skill, until he gets into the rank
of skilled workers, or more frequently becomes a sub-contractor, or a
small shopkeeper. It might appear that as he thus rose, the effect of
his competition in the low skilled labour market would disappear. And
this would be so were it not for the persistent arrival of new-comers to
take the place of those who rise. It is the continuity in the flow of
foreign emigration which constitutes the real danger.
Economic considerations do not justify us in expecting any speedy check
upon this flow. The growing means of communication among nations, the
cheapening of transport, the breaking down of international prejudices,
must, if they are left free to operate, induce the labourer to seek the
best market for his labour, and thus tend to equalize the condition of
labour in the various communities, raising the level of the lower paid
and lower lived at the expense of the higher paid and higher lived.
§ 10. The Water-tight Compartment Theory.--One point remains to be
mentioned. It is sometimes urged that the foreign Jews who come to our
shores do not injure our low skilled workers to any considerable extent,
because they do not often enter native trades, but introduce new trades
which would not have existed at all were it not for their presence. They
work, it is said, in water-tight compartments, competing among
themselves, but not directly competing with English workers. Now if it
were the case that these foreigners really introduced new branches of
production designed to stimulate and supply new wants this contention
would have much weight. The Flemings who in Edward III.'s reign
introduced the finer kinds of weaving into England, and the Huguenot
refugees who established new branches of the silk, glass, and paper
manufactures, conferred a direct service upon English commerce, and
their presence in the labour market was probably an indirect service to
the English workers. But this is not the case with the modern Jew
immigrants. They have not stimulated or supplied new wants. It is not
even correct to say that most of them do not directly compete with
native labour. It is true that certain branches of the cheap clothing
trade have been their creation. The cheap coat trade, which they almost
monopolize, seems due to their presence. But even here they have
established no new _kind_ of trade. To their cheap labour perhaps is due
in some cases the large export trade in cheap clothing, but even then it
is doubtful whether the work would not otherwise have been done by
machinery under healthier conditions, and have furnished work and wages
for English workers. During the last decade they have been entering more
and more into direct competition with British labour in the cabinet-
making, shoemaking, baking, hair-dressing, and domestic service
occupations. Lastly, they enter into direct competition of the worst
form with English female labour, which is driven in these very clothing
trades to accept work and wages which are even too low to tempt the Jews
of Whitechapel. The constant infiltration of cheap immigrant labour is
in large measure responsible for the existence of the "sweating
workshops," and the survival of low forms of industrial development
which form a factor in the problem of poverty.