1912] Rural Depopulation in Southern Ontario. 201 



RURAL DEPOPULATION IN SOUTHERN ONTARIO. 



By S. a. Cudmore, 

 Lecturer in Political Economy, University of Toronto. 



{Read 27th April, igi2.) 



Among European peoples and societies of European extraction the 

 decline of rural population — relative in some cases, absolute in others — 

 has been one of the most remarkable phenomena of the last half-century. 

 It has taken place in such densely populated regions as Great Britain, 

 France, Germany and Belgium, and also in such comparatively thinly 

 settled countries as the United States, Canada and Australia. It is on 

 the whole most noticeable in what we should consider the most progres- 

 sive countries, and least evident in such economically backward societies 

 as those of Russia and the Balkan States. This great displacement of 

 population has naturally excited the keenest interest, and in many cases 

 the greatest alarm. It has, during the past decade, been widely discussed 

 in Europe, the United States and Canada, and in the discussion the ad- 

 vantage of numbers, if not of argument, has been with those who hold 

 that the movement is an evil, pregnant with danger for the future of the 

 entire white race, and particularly of the English-speaking nations. 



The results of the Canadian census of 191 1 show that in the past 

 decade the rural population of the Dominion has increased 17.16 per 

 cent, while urban population has increased 62.25 P^r cent, or more than 

 three times as fast. Four of our nine provinces — Ontario, Nova Scotia, 

 New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island — show an actual decrease of 

 rural population; nowhere in the Dominion has rural population in- 

 creased at the same rate as urban. 



Our subject, however, confines us to our own Province of Ontario. 

 Here we find that in spite of the activity of a progressive Department of 

 Agriculture and considerable immigration of agricultural labourers, the 

 rural population of the Province has declined during the decade by 

 52,811, while the urban population has increased by 392,511. A decline 

 of 52,811 may not at first seem a very serious matter in a large and 

 populous province, but one must remember that this has occurred in 

 spite of a considerable extension of settlement in New Ontario, and fur- 

 ther that this decline has been going on in some parts of the Province for 

 about fifty years. 



