Problems of Poverty: An Inquiry into the Industrial Condition of the Poor

by J. A. Hobson

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.