464 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



annexations, and the population of tlie annexations. In the twenty 

 years the population of Boston gained, including all, 197,921, or 

 79 + per cent ; the old city proper gained but 22,549, or IG + per 

 cent; while the jjopulation of the annexations increased 175,402, 

 or 150+ per cent, in the twenty years. 



These facts certainly remove all apprehension as to the increase 

 of the slum population of the cities named, and I submit that it is 

 perfectly reasonable that the population of such districts can not 

 increase ; and that, while there is a great setting of people toward 

 our cities, they are found as a rule among the suburban popula- 

 tion, in healthy sanitary districts ; and that whatever influx there 

 is to the slum localities is entirely offset by the outgoing jDeople 

 from such districts. 



After collecting the material for this chapter, my attention was 

 called to an exceedingly valuable article in the October Contem- 

 porary Review, by Mr. Sidney J. Low, entitled The Rise of the 

 Suburbs. Mr. Low, taking his figures from the recent census of 

 England, that of last spring, makes a table of some of the typical 

 districts of inner London, on both sides of the river, w4th their 

 rates of increase or decrease since 1881, which is as follows: 



„ Rate of Increase or 



^'®^'""- decrease per cent. 



City of London 25'5 decrease. 



Westminster 19-9 " 



Strand 18-2 " 



St. Giles \-l-l 



St. George, ITanover Square 10 " 4 " 



Holborn 6-8 " 



St. George-in-the-East 3 "4 '' 



Siioreditch 'i • " 



Bethnal Green 1 • 7 increase. 



Mile End , 1-8 



St. Clave, Southwark 1-4 " 



Kensington 4 9 " 



Whitechapel 4-3 '• 



In regard to these districts, Mr. Low remarks that some of 

 them are wealthy residental districts, while many of them are poor 

 and others altogether poverty-stricken. " Bethnal Green. White- 

 chapel, St. Olave, Southwark, and parts of St. Pancras, St. Giles, 

 and Holborn," he says, " are tinted with a very dark brush on Mr. 

 Charles Booth's excellent comparative maps of London poverty." 

 And he further says : " It is not unsatisfactory to find that the 

 dwellers in these localities are obeying the great law of centrifugal 

 attraction, and quitting the inner recesses of the metropolis to 

 find homes in the outskirts. The people who leave Hatton Garden, 

 and Commercial Street, and Hoxton, and Seven Dials, either forced 

 out by ' improvements ' or voluntarily retiring, do not go to the 

 country — that we know well enough ; nor do the country folks 



