Chapter III.
The Influx of Population into Large Towns.
Sec. 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.
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