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.
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