HKB
the opening up of new countries like the United States and Australia, the railway is the literal maker of the town, in older countries it is the chief alimental channel.
The pace at which this concentration of population in large towns proceeds is the most serviceable measurement of the progress which the various parts of the industrial world are making in machine-industry.
There are changes other than those of industrial method which help the townward movement. The spirit of curiosity and enterprise stimulated by education and the newspaper press, a desire for freer and more varied social intercourse, a love of sensation and amusement, a seeking after culture and intellectual development, in some cases the mere promptings of idleness, discontent, or even criminal desires, drive an increasing proportion of the younger rural population towards the towns. But it is the combination of industrial changes in which machinery plays the central part--the increased application of machinery to agriculture reducing the demand for agricultural labour, the development of manufacturing industries in towns, the labour of transport and distribution requiring centralised machinery--that makes this movement physically and economically feasible. The shift in the proportionate demand for labour in towns and in country attributable to machine-production is a principal direct agent in the movement.
Sec. 2. In England, par excellence the manufacturing country, the growth of the town as compared with the country is strongly marked during the last thirty years.
Urban Population[267] 62.3 64.8 66.6 71.7 Rural " 37.7 35.2 33.4 28.3
During the decennium 1881-91 there was a considerable check in the immigration from the country into the large towns, though the proportion of townsfolk to country folk grew even more rapidly than in the preceding ten years.[268]
In Holland and Belgium, notwithstanding a large migration to foreign lands, the towns grow far quicker than the total population. Thus in Holland in the period 1870-79 the towns increased 17.25, while the rural districts only increased 6.8. In Belgium, where the emigration across the border is still larger, there is a tide of migration of the parochial or country population continually setting towards Antwerp, Brussels, and Liege.[269]
This flow of population to the towns is not affected to any considerable extent either by the rate of growth of the population itself or by the small stake in the land possessed by the bulk of the agricultural population in such a country as England. For in France, where the growth of population during the last half century has been extremely slow, and where the majority of the agriculturists have a definite stake in the soil, the growth of the town population is most remarkable. In Germany also, where peasant-proprietors are very numerous, the towns continually absorb a larger proportion of the population. In 1871 the urban population of the empire was 36.1 per cent. of the total, in 1885 it was 41.8 per cent. In Austria, Hungary, Sweden, Italy, a similar movement is clearly traceable. The above diagram relating to movements of French population indicates that Paris has been growing more rapidly than other French towns. In other industrial countries also it is found that the pace of growth varies for the most part directly with the size of the town. In England, it is true that the largest cities show during the last decennium a certain slackening in the pace of growth. But the towns between 20,000 and 100,000 are still growing far more rapidly than those between 5,000 and 20,000, while those below 5,000 fail to keep pace with the general rise of population. This fact obtains the clearest recognition in the preliminary report of the census of 1891.[270] "The urban population increases then very much more rapidly than the rural population. And not only so, but the larger, or rather the more populous the urban districts,[271] and the more decided therefore its urban character, the higher, generally speaking and with many individual exceptions, is the rate of growth."