"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.