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.
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