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.
Sec. 7. The Extent of Foreign Immigration.--So much for the inflow from the
country districts. But there is another inflow which is drawing close
attention, the inflow of cheap foreign labour into our towns. Here again
we have first to guard against some exaggeration. It is not true that
German, Polish, and Russian Jews are coming over in large battalions to
steal all the employment of the English working-man, by under-selling
him in the labour-market. In the first place, it should be noted that
the foreigners of England, as a whole, bear a smaller proportion to the
total population than in any other first-class European state. In 1901
the foreigners were 76 in 10,000 of the population; that is a good deal
less than one per cent.
Pages:
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79