THE STRANGER WITHIN OUR GATES AND OUR OWN TEEMING MILLIONS
Technical reasons rendering an exact comparison of foreigners settled
in England at different dates impracticable. Approximate results
yielded by the analysis of official figures, and their lessons. Danger
of German competition with English clerks exaggerated. Actual
occupations followed by foreigners. Allegations concerning alien
pauperism tested. Proportion of foreign to English pauperism in
London. Percentage and nationalities of foreigners in great towns of
England and their occupations. Theories about population, especially
Malthus. The Malthusian doctrine examined by the light of English
experience. Objections to it summarized. The truth and the details of
English population since 1793. Views of Dr Price and others as to
decrease refuted by Cobbett. Figures and facts of increase. How the
non-pressure on means of subsistence can be explained. New industries.
In the preceding chapter it was mentioned that one of the elements in the
increased popularity and prosperity of the theatre as an English
institution is the growing addition of foreigners to our native
population. This will be a convenient place at which not only to analyse
the composition of the foreign influx to our shores, but generally to
examine the rate and the results of the increase of our population.
Official data for the numerical estimate of the strangers within our gates
is not forthcoming with the certainty and completeness that might be
desired. The reason given by the parliamentary report[47] is intelligible
enough; and is to the following effect. The English census takes
cognizance of birthplaces, not of nationalities. British subjects who have
been born abroad are indeed asked to state the fact, but frequently fail
to do so. When the return reaches the Registrar General, the confusion is
frequently such as to render it doubtful whether the foreign birthplace
implies a foreign nationality as well. This uncertainty was not removed,
but was rather increased, when the Enumerating Officer exercised his
ingenuity in deducing the national identity from the surname. For instance
few patronymics are more distinctively German than Mueller. None is more
likely to be written by an English clerk as the indubitably British
Miller. The result has been at different times an understatement of
residents in England who are foreigners both by nationality and birth, and
an overstatement of the foreign-born British subjects. The operation of
the principle adopted in the last census is exactly opposite to this; it
tends to overrate foreign subjects domiciled in England and to underrate
English subjects who were born beyond seas. The general consequence is
that as the Report already mentioned reminds one, the foreign residents
returns for 1891 are not minutely comparable with those for previous
censuses. It will be enough to restrict ourselves on this point to the
returns of the last three censuses 1871, 1881, 1891, a period of twenty
years. Of persons being foreigners both by birth and nationality residing
at these epochs in England and Wales, there were in 1871, 100,638; in
1881 there were 117,999; in 1891 there were 198,113. The process indicated
by these figures seems to have been at varying rates going forward through
a long series of years.
For the two decades between 1871 and 1891, the growth of foreigners among
us was 98 per cent. It will, therefore, probably not be a serious
miscalculation to estimate the total of strangers within our gates as
having doubled itself during the more recent years of the Queen's reign.
This estimate derives fresh probability from the fact that between 1881
and 1891 the increase of foreigners domiciled in England outstripped by
nearly six-fold the augmentation during the previous decade. The greater
part of foreigners in England and Wales are with us for business purposes,
or are sailors on board ships trading with England. As, therefore, might
be expected, most of them are to be found in the great industrial centres,
or at the large seaports. Thus, of a total of 198,113, 95,053, or nearly
one-half were enumerated in London; 15,536 in the suburban counties of
Surrey, Kent, Middlesex, Essex. Lancashire contained 25,109 with an
overflow of 2,254 into the suburban parts of Cheshire. In Yorkshire there
were 15,755; in the mining counties of Durham, Glamorganshire,
Northumberland, though not engaged in mining but in shipping coals, there
were 14,908. The foreign miners, it may be said, actually at work in
England are very few. The town in which the total proportion of foreigners
to the population has always been highest is of course London (the
strictly metropolitan area); the London foreign population is 23 to
1,000. In the suburban districts of West Ham, Willesden and Tottenham the
proportion is 10 to 1,000. In the provinces, next to London come Cardiff
with 21 per 4,000, South Shields and Manchester each with 18 per 1,000,
Leeds and Grimsby each with 16, Liverpool and Hull each with 14; Newport
and Swansea each with 12; the other towns where a proportion of 10 per
1,000 is reached are Sunderland, Hastings and Brighton. Of the 198,000 odd
foreigners now under consideration, 1,804 are Asiatics coming from China,
Persia, Arabia or elsewhere; 1,062 are from Egypt or some other part of
Africa; 26,226 are Americans; out of these 19,740 belong to the United
States, the subjects of the Stripes and Stars enumerated as domiciled
among us in 1881 were 17,767, an increase of 11.1 per cent, during the
decade. The number of English living abroad is of course immeasurably
greater than that of foreigners living in England. Thus in the case of the
United States alone, in 1891 there were settled 1,008,220 English people;
this was an increase of 35.2 per cent. over those enumerated in 1881.
The complaint that foreign competition in England itself is crowding
native industry out of the market recurs periodically; it renders of
special importance to Englishmen the estimate of the European foreigners
who have, during the period now under review, immigrated to our shores.
The total of those composing this category, men, women and children, has
been 168,814; as for the reasons already explained one is cautioned to
remember, this is an outside calculation owing to the inclusion in it of
many who though British subjects, omitted to set this forth in their
schedules. Of the 168,814 European foreigners, 101,255 were males. From
this total may be deducted 7,421 as boys under 15, and 3,039 as men of
upwards of 65; the sailors, in number 15,035 should not appear in the
estimate. When all deductions under these headings of industrial
ineffectives have been made there is left an aggregate of 75,760 effective
competitors with native industry on English soil, whom during these
decades their respective countries have equipped and sent forth against
us.
With our own population of 37 millions steadily increasing, the numerical
rivalry seems less alarming than might have been imagined. As a matter of
fact that rivalry strictly speaking may be larger than the provisional
estimate now given would show. It sometimes happens within the experience
of local registrars that to avoid English jealousy and so to have a better
chance of obtaining work, industrial aliens Anglicize their own
patronymics, change them for purely English names, or give English towns
and counties as their places of birth; for the most part these deceptions
are detected by the enumerator. In St George's in the East, however, in
Spitalfields, in Mile End Old Town and elsewhere some registrars seem to
think the fraud often passes undiscovered; but others, with equal
experience, disavow any reason for the suspicion of such a practice within
their areas.
As in the case of our Scotch and Irish colonies, so, too, with our
settlers from the European continent the men largely outnumber the women.
Whereas in the general population there are 106 women to every 100 of men,
and 35 per cent. of the people are under 15 years of age; among the
European foreigners there are only 67 women to every 100 men; only 8.8 per
cent. of the whole are under 15. In the case of Swedes, Norwegians, Danes,
chiefly of course, sailors, there are four men to every woman, and
sometimes as many as seven or eight. That in the case of Belgians, French
and Swiss permanently settled in England, the men are outnumbered by the
women is of course to be explained by the demands made for the former in
the capacity of governesses, milliners, and serving maids. The figures
relating to the sex of the strangers within our gates, as might be
expected, fluctuate. Especially notable is the difference between the
statistics for 1881 and for 1891; in the former year children under 15
formed 6.4 per cent. of all foreigners; in 1891 the percentage had risen
to more than 8.
The inference to be drawn from this statistical contrast suggests a new
kind of immigration and probably implies that with a view to permanent
settlement in England the foreigner was transporting his household gods
bodily to our shores. Much has of late been heard about the crowding of
pauper aliens into England. Some of the figures just examined may have
involved cases of outdoor relief. Of this there is no evidence. But that a
very serious addition was in this way made to the pauperism within English
workhouses does not appear to be true. The exact figures and facts on this
point may perhaps as well be given; of the 36,871 foreign Europeans
living at the time of the last census in the East End of London, only 105
had seen the inside of an English union; out of the other (English)
668,243 inhabitants of these parts of the town 13.5 per 1,000 were pauper
inmates; in other words, the proportion of foreign to native pauperism in
those districts where foreigners chiefly congregate was less than
one-fourth of the proportion of paupers in the remaining population. Of
these foreigners inside English unions 51 were Germans; 16 were French; 14
were Russians or Poles; 5 were Swiss; of the remainder no more than 4 came
from any single foreign State.
'Made in Germany' is a phrase round which there has centred lately much
controversy, political, economical, social and personal. This will have
prepared the reader to hear that on an analysis of the nationality of our
foreign residents, Germany heads the list with 50,599; Poles and Russians
come next with 45,074; then the French with 20,797; afterwards follow in
the order indicated with numbers fluctuating between 10,000 and 5,000
Austrians or Hungarians, Dutch, Norwegians, Swiss; no other nationality
contributed more than 5,000; the Russian and Polish names, which, after
the Germans, constitute the majority are so unmistakable as to render a
comparison between their numbers in 1881 and in 1891 tolerably safe. This,
for reasons already stated, is not so in the case of foreigners with less
distinctive patronymics. In 1881 the Poles or Russians enumerated were
14,468; in 1891 they were 54,074; the increase in ten years had thus been
some 212 per cent. Germans, in number 50,599, constitute nearly one-third
of our whole foreign population. Of that moiety, 1,981 are teachers; 1,198
musicians; 5,358 domestic servants in private families or inns; 659 are
professional cooks. To pass to a higher social category, 1,207 Germans are
established in business as brokers and merchants; 1,966 as clerks; 393 are
commercial travellers; 2,833 are sea-faring men; 282 are jewellers or
goldsmiths; 889 are watchmakers; 794 cabinetmakers; 1,309 are butchers;
2,340 are bakers; 276 are sugar refiners; only 592 are classed as general
labourers; 5,042 are occupied in ministering to the needs, luxuries, or
vanities of the person from the making of coats to the dressing of hair,
or the preparation of feathers for Court head dresses.
From these figures two facts of some interest emerge. The business clerks
who are complained of as interfering so disastrously with the clerical
labour market of Englishmen do not represent the largest contingent of
Teutonic industry among us. Numerically the most serious competition of
German with English industry is in the case of domestic servants. German
tailors are second in order of importance; the clerks come after, not only
these, but other occupations. Next to Germany, Scandinavia, Belgium and
Spain seem to supply the most numerous competitors with the industry of
the British middle classes.
The growth of the purely English population, not complicated by any
foreign elements accompanied, as it has been, with a steady increase of
national prosperity is enough to supply instructive material to the
philosophical enquirer into the facts and figures of English progress
during the Victorian epoch. Before looking into these by the light of the
once accepted theory of population it will be as well clearly to state
what these doctrines are, as well as to summarize the criticisms to which,
on the face of them, they are open. The doctrine of Malthus was first put
forward by him at the end of the last century. During the first years of
the present, while the reverend philosopher was professor of history and
political economy at Haileybury, few subjects excited so much interest or
controversy among writers on political philosophy or comparative
statistics. The doctrine, as it was originally propounded by its author,
is that population tends to increase in geometrical ratio, that
subsistence only increases in numerical ratio. It followed, therefore,
that unless the population be periodically thinned by the external
influences of pestilence or war, the poorest classes chronically must be
at starvation point, and that unless the multiplication of the race be
checked by prudential restraints, within a given time the point will be
reached at which the population on this planet is altogether in excess of
the means for its support. On the threshold of the discussion which this
proposition elicited, the obvious remark was that it asserted not an
actuality but a possibility. Hence, unless, instead of a tendency, a
proved experience could be asserted; unless, in other words, in the place
of a tendency to increase existing, a historical increase could be
established, the commentators on Malthus maintained that the danger which
he foresaw was too remote to be reckoned with. The following is the line
taken by the critics of the Malthusian theory. It was declared to rest
upon a series of hypotheses which as a matter of fact were never
fulfilled. Granted that if the progression foreseen by Malthus took place,
the calamity apprehended must ensue; it was maintained, as a matter of
fact, that the abundant safeguards existing in practice were ignored by
the alarmist _doctrinaires_. Supposing each marriageable pair upon the
earth to marry first, and to produce afterwards as many children as a
normally healthy couple may expect, not only subsistence, but standing
room in this world would fail them. Experience, however, shows the
fulfilment of any such forecast to be a moral impossibility. In daily
practice there are apart from difficulty of subsistence many checks which
avail to keep increase of population within reasonable bounds.
Thus, statistics show that more than half the human beings born die from
accidents or ailments before reaching marriageable age. Of those who
actually reach that age, an uncertain, but considerable proportion fail to
find mates; the men perhaps because they are over fastidious or selfish;
the women possibly because they lack attractions of dower or person. With
many more the course of true love runs crooked; the desired partner not
being attainable, a solitary life is led. In other cases, the fear of not
being able to maintain a conventional position acts as a deterrent. Then
there is the considerable percentage of cases where legitimate
opportunities of marriage are denied. Thus Colonial frontier men in
solitary wilds have few opportunities of courtship or matrimony. Soldiers
constantly changing their station; or sailors with a brevet wife in every
port, are not usually marrying men, or the founders of numerous families.
Of those who marry, many have no children, some have only one; others have
sickly children who die. On the assumption that everyone in the world
married, each pair must have two children to keep up the population.
Hence the critics of the Malthusian theory have calculated that, striking
out of their count those who cannot or will not marry, and those who,
marrying, are childless; merely to maintain the population without
increasing it, every married couple ought to produce a family of six.
Though according to the Malthusians themselves this sufficiently liberal
allowance of progeny might be reached without any calamitous consequences,
practical acquaintance with the contingencies of domestic life shows that
this quantum will not often be reached. If in any part of the world there
existed conditions favourable to marriage and to fecundity, it was in
Australia, shortly after the earliest gold discoveries, but when many
immense fortunes had been made in farming; here there was work for all,
wages were high, living cheap, cultivable, but uncultivated land abounded;
finally there were no catastrophic checks from earthquake, pestilence or
famine to the multiplication of human beings; if, therefore, the
Malthusian doctrine could anywhere be verified, surely it would be here.
Notwithstanding all these inducements to marriage and the propagation of
the species, the actual rate of population increase was 2 per cent. a
year.
Hence it may perhaps be inferred that this represents the normal rate.
That falls far short of the geometrical rate which the Malthusians would
have us expect. The physiological truth, as expounded by experts in these
matters would seem to be that in proportion as subsistence is more
abundant and of a better kind, life more regular and artificial, fertility
decreases. Scientific physicists point as proof of this statement to the
fact that wild animals when domesticated or in good condition are less
prolific than in their normally savage and poor state. So it is with women
in the western wilds of Ireland, or in the Scotch Highlands. As their food
and clothing are scarce and coarse, their maternity increases. The
inference from the facts now cited clearly is that whatever the terms of
the Malthusian proposition may mean, their significance does not warrant
the conclusions that ardent Malthusians have at all times drawn from them.
But it has been asserted that famine and plague are the Divinely appointed
checks to the growth of population; thus showing some external restraint
upon the multiplication of the race to be necessary to prevent population
outstripping subsistence. The most familiar proofs offered of such an
assertion are the periodical famines in India, especially that in the
province of Orissa, and the Irish famine from the potato failure in 1846.
On these proofs the following remarks suggest themselves. In the case of
Orissa, numbers had nothing to do with the famine or consequent mortality;
the people died because the heat of the sun untempered by rain literally
scorched the food supply out of existence; if there had been only as many
hundreds as there were millions, the same calamitous result, though on a
numerically smaller scale, would have ensued; a province of Central India
was decimated because the food did not exist. The famine therefore was
real.
In the case of Ireland, no famine at the close of the first decade of the
Queen's reign existed in the same sense that it had done in Orissa; the
potato crop alone failed; corn, dairy produce, food products generally
were plentiful; corn in fact was being exported from Ireland while the
Irish themselves were perishing from starvation. The calamity therefore
was less the stoppage of supplies by Providence as a check on population
than a pecuniary failure. Nor was it a visitation as regards which man
could plead exemption from responsibility. The potato rot did not come
upon the Irish peasantry in a day or in a week. The disease had appeared
in Eastern Europe so early as 1844 and 1843; it was scientifically certain
that eventually it would reach Ireland. When, after due warning it
attacked the plots of miserable soil reclaimed by peasant industry from
hillside and bog, the destruction of the staple of native food wrought by
it was gradual. Weeks and months were required to complete the process of
rotting. Nothing was done. The people died not from the unkindness of
nature, but from the neglect of man. Had the prudential restraints of the
Malthusians limited the numbers to half the actual total, the agrarian
policy which was responsible for the diet of potatoes instead of corn
would have resulted in the same poverty and, therefore, in the same
death.[48]
One is not here concerned with the abstract truth of the theory of
population enounced by Malthus, but with its applicability to, or its
instructiveness in the case of, the England of Queen Victoria. What then
are the facts of population here to be dealt with? The multiplication of
the inhabitants of this country is known never to have been so rapid as
during the century which opens with the French Revolution in 1793, and
which witnesses at its close the sixtieth anniversary of Her Majesty's
accession. Earlier periods of augmentation may therefore be omitted. A
hundred years ago, Dr Price, maintaining population actually to have
decreased, spoke of its decline as a great danger. Cobbett and other more
accurate observers, or less incautious generalizers, in opposition to Dr
Price, established circumstantially the fact of an increase; but the
possibility of a contrary view being taken is as suggestive as it now
seems remarkable.
Mr Thorold Rogers has been guided by his study of prices to the conclusion
that the standard of comfort in living began to rise among us from the
Reformation of the sixteenth century progressively onwards; and that even
during the eighteenth century the masses were enjoying a golden age.
Between 1750 and 1800;--the period during which the factory system began
to be known, and the problems of population and production were both
closely discussed,--no fear of population getting ahead of subsistence
suggested itself. Similarly during the Corn Law agitation 1840-6, the
increase of production from English soil, notwithstanding the
economico-agrarian law of diminishing return was proved to have outgrown
the population. Later and more detailed statistics show that since 1831
population with us has increased 30 per cent., capital 100 per cent.,
purchasing power 600 per cent. During the last half century the average
price of corn has been falling. Our demand for foreign corn has increased
and is increasing. This evidence fortified by the income-tax returns,
forbids the notion that during the last two centuries population in
England has outstripped the means of its support. The conclusion is
therefore irresistible that the natural tendencies to increase of
inhabitants, whatever the occult possibilities may be, practically are
counteracted by motives invisible and undefinable, perhaps, but not less
potent. As a writer in _Macmillan's Magazine_[49] points out, population
generally increases up to the relative limit set by the power of procuring
subsistence at any given time and place. The absolute limit as is shrewdly
remarked, could only be reached when the highest skill and organization
have extracted the last possible morsel of food from the earth; that
experience has not yet been reached. So far from population always getting
ahead of subsistence, its increase is by no means invariably as rapid as
the development of the food supply. Both between 1560 and 1760; again
between 1830 and 1880, this seems to have been the case in England.
During many years, as each decennial census has appeared, timid
sociologists may well have felt misgivings whether England could continue
to support her ever multiplying millions. The fears of science have not
been verified by the facts of experience; thus exactly a quarter of a
century since the census return of 1871 seemed to leave no escape from the
conclusion, that population had already all but overtaken the means of
subsistence, or that unless our numbers were at once arrested, it must in
a very short time do so. Since 1871 we have added 7 millions to our
population, the equivalent, that is, of 1,200,000 families and the same
number of working men. Instead of the pressure on subsistence being
greater, or the average condition of our people being worse, the exact
opposite has occurred. In comparison with the state of things two decades
since, the masses among us are to-day better housed, better clothed,
better shod, better fed, better educated. There is, as in an earlier
chapter was shown, a steady decrease of pauperism; the number of those who
with their dependents of all kinds live on the result of their
investments, is growing constantly. Whether it be due to the reduction in
the cost of conveyance, to the opening up of fresh fields of supply, or to
the appreciation of gold, the fall in prices of the chief articles of
consumption, corn, sugar, tea, cotton, timber, is a visible and a great
benefit to the country.
The fact that the increase between 1881 and 1891 fell short by about a
quarter of a million of that which signalized the preceding ten years has
been demonstrated by statistical experts of scientific authority not to
indicate pressure on means of subsistence, but to be explicable by the
stationariness of the population in many rural districts as well perhaps
as by the disinclination, reflected from French and American precedent, of
Englishwomen indefinitely to fulfil the functions of maternity.
During the period now spoken of, with the exception of mining, the great
staple industries of the United Kingdom have none of them increased, while
agriculture has decreased. It may, therefore, well seem problematical how
the 1,200,000 fresh heads of families have found a livelihood for
themselves and their belongings.
The explanation can only be that several new, as they are often nameless
industries have during this time come into existence. Birmingham, the home
of small industrial enterprises and in a less degree Sheffield, would of
themselves explain the mystery. And here specific mention of a personal
experience seems necessary. When the present writer by local observation
was first acquiring material for such writing as that of which this book
consists, he visited among other places Sheffield, under the obliging
personal conduct of its then, and happily its present, Member, Mr A. J.
Mundella. Close to one of the largest factories in that capital of cutlery
and furnaces is a small establishment owned by a single proprietor who
from that source of income alone, has realized a considerable fortune.
This gentleman contracts for the purchase of all the refuse, the waste
paper, the gilt or tin foil and other unconsidered trifles included which
accumulate in the rubbish heaps of other premises. On their reaching his
place of business, they are placed in a furnace; all the impurities are
burnt out of them. There remains a nondescript residuum of charred and
apparently worthless substances. Some of these, however, contain particles
of gold dust; these are placed into a crucible; eventually there is often
left a deposit of the precious metal which the jewellers are ready to buy.
The gold watch chain worn by the Sheffield industrialist now spoken of,
was of several carats, and was manufactured entirely out of the yield of
this refuse. The incident is worth mentioning as a concrete suggestion
drawn from real life of the protean methods of industrial money-making
that are constantly being discovered by the ingenious and unabashed
industry which in Virgil's phrase, conquers all things.[50]