URBAN POPULATION. . 465 



come in to take their jolaces in any large numbers. For the immi- 

 grant from the congested districts of tlie town, and for the emi- 

 grant from the decaying rural parishes, we must look to the 

 suburbs ; and we find him there, if figures can tell us anything. 

 Compare, with the list just given of stationary or declining areas 

 in central London, the statistics for a few of the regisration divis- 

 ions which lie farther out : 



T^ Increase per 



I^ISTEICT. ggnt gj^gg fggi_ 



CamberwcU 26-1 



Woolwich S2 • 8 



Wandsworth 46"1 



Hampstead 50 • 5 



Fulham 64 • 5 



Totteuham 95-0 



Willesden 121-9 



Leyton 133 5 



" Here is where the increase of ' Greater London,' with its five 

 and a half millions of inhabitants, is found. It is not, as hasty 

 observers have imagined, in the teeming alleys of ' Darkest Lon- 

 don,' or in the warren of rabbit-hutches which spreads for a mile 

 or two north and south of the Thames. The center of population 

 is shifting from the heart to the limbs. The life-blood is pouring 

 into the long arms of brick and mortar and cheap stucco that are 

 feeling their way out to the Surrey moors and the Essex flats and 

 the Hertfordshire copses. Already ' Outer London ' is beginning 

 to vie in population with the ' Inner Ring ' ; a few decades hence, 

 and it will have altogether passed it." 



These figures for different portions of London are exceedingly 

 significant, and show precisely the same conditions as are shown 

 by the facts which I have already grouped relative to New York, 

 Philadelphia, and Boston, and they show conclusively that the 

 movement is greatly different from what it is often supposed to 

 be. To again quote Mr. Low : " The population is not shifting 

 from the fields to the slums ; and the slums themselves are not be- 

 coming fuller, but the reverse. So far from the heart of the city 

 being congested with the blood driven from the extremities, we 

 find, on the contrary, that the larger centers of population are 

 stationary, or thinning down ; it is the districts all round them 

 which are filling up. The greatest advance in the decade is shown 

 not in the cities themselves, but in the ring of suburbs which 

 spread into the country about them. If the process goes on un- 

 checked, the Englishman of the future will be of the city but not 

 in it. The son and grandson of the man from the fields will neither 

 be a dweller in the country nor a dweller in the town. He will be 

 a suburb-dweller. The majority of the people of this island will 

 live in the suburbs ; and the suburban type will be the most wide- 



VOL. XL. 33 



