XII THE DEPRESSION OF TRADE 211 



— of dwellers in the country is somewhat higher than 

 that of dwellers in the towns ; the birth-rate is higher, 

 and the death-rate lower.^ Therefore it is a very low esti- 

 mate to consider that what may be called the normal 

 increase of people dwelling in the country is seventeen per 

 cent. Therefore the area that is actually decreasing will 

 not represent the whole of the area from which people 

 have migrated into the towns ; they have also migrated 

 from all those areas in which the population has not in- 

 creased so much as it would normally have increased. 

 That is, if in any area there is less than seventeen per 

 cent, of increase of population since 1871, it is perfectly 

 certain some of the people must have gone out of that 

 area ; and if we add to those which have actually decreased 

 the areas in which the population must have migrated in 

 order to make the increase so little as it is, then we shall 

 find that in only about one-fourth of the whole country 

 has the population increased to its normal amount. This 

 increasing area consists almost wholly of the great towns 

 and the residential districts around them, while all the 

 rest of the country has been becoming more or less de- 

 populated. The amount of the decrease of rural popula- 

 tion is a distinct question. I find that the actual 

 depopulation that is the diminution of inhabitants for the 

 ten years in these decreasing sub-districts, amounts to 

 three hundred and eight thousand. Then I take the 

 amount the population of these areas ought to have in- 

 creased in ten years at seventeen per cent., and that 

 added to the actual decrease gives an effective diminution 

 of nearly a million from this decreasing area. Then 

 adding to this the emigration from the area of small 

 increase, I find that in the ten years the people who have 

 migrated out of the country districts into the town dis- 

 tricts, with their natural increase in the same period, 

 amounts to about one million and a quarter. 



^ See Dr Stark, in Tenth Report on Births and Deaths in Scotland, 

 quoted bj' Darwin in his Descent of Man, p. 138. 



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