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.
Sec. 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.
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