594 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



more than the natural increment of country population; they are 

 drawing off the middle-aged as well as the young. Thus great areas 

 are being actually depopulated. For example, in the decade from 

 1881 to 1891, the French cities of 30,000 inhabitants or over added 

 to their respective numbers more than three times as many as the 

 total increase of population for the entire country. Even their 

 due proportion of the abnormally slow increase was denied to the 

 rural districts; the ten years left them less densely populated than 

 before. In 1846 almost half of the eighty-eight departments in 

 France had a larger population than they have to-day. Paris alone, 

 the metropolis, has, as we have already observed, absorbed four 

 fifths of the entire increase of the land; the remainder was added 

 to the other large cities in proportion to their size. The British 

 Isles exemplify the same tendency. More than half of the English 

 towns with populations over 25,000 are the product of this cen- 

 tury. Sixty out of one hundred and five of these cities have arisen 

 since 1825. This is, of course, due to the extension of the factory 

 system in great measure. The same depopulation of the rural 

 districts is noted. Ten rural counties in England and Wales alone 

 have fewer inhabitants than in 1851. The fact is that western 

 Europe is being gradually transformed into a huge factory town. 

 It is being fed less and less from the products of its own territory. 

 The wheat fields of the Americas, India, and Australia are con- 

 tributing what formerly was raised by the peasantry at home. It is 

 not surprising that the trend is toward the cities; were it even more 

 marked it would be no marvel. 



This growth of city populations has, then, taken place largely at 

 the expense of the country. It must be so, for the urban birth 

 rates are not enough in excess of the mortality, save in a few cases, 

 to account for more than a small part of the wonderful growth 

 which we have instanced. The towns are being constantly re- 

 cruited from without. Nor is it an indiscriminate flocking city- 

 ward which is taking place. A process of selection is at work on 

 a grand scale. The great majority to-day who are pouring into 

 the cities are those who, like the emigrants to the United States 

 in the old days of natural migration, come because they have the 

 physical equipment and the mental disposition to seek a better- 

 ment of their fortunes away from home. Of course, an appreciable 

 contingent of such migrant types is composed of the merely dis- 

 contented, of the restless, and the adventurous; but in the main 

 the best blood of the land it is which feeds into the arteries of 

 city life. 



Another more certain mode of proof is possible for demonstrat- 

 ing that the population of cities is largely made up either of direct 



