DEPOPULATION OF RURAL ENGLAND 385 



The reference to the " national physique " contains 

 an anxious portent in connection with this process of 

 migration. These masses of rural folk, starved out 

 of their natural dwelling-place — the country-sides — 

 become, as it were, invaders of the towns and centres 

 of industry. No doubt they better themselves, not 

 by filling places that could not be filled by others on 

 the spot, but by supplanting other, older, and perhaps 

 less capable workers. These supplanted ones sink 

 into lower grades of employment, or become casuals, 

 doing anything they can get to do, and at last many 

 of them, after a bitter struggle, sink into the ranks of 

 the submerged or fall on the rates. It is thoughtless 

 and unjust to reproach this human wreckage with 

 being "undeserving," "unemployable," etc., because 

 few besides themselves know the odds they had to 

 contend with in their downward course before they 

 finally gave in. The offspring of the invading class 

 deteriorate in their turn under the bad conditions of 

 an overcrowded town life, but fresh relays continually 

 arrive to take their places. Every thousand acres of 

 land that goes out of cultivation of necessity swells 

 the number of the human migrants. 



Some writers on the subject console themselves 

 with the statements that there is a "natural tendency" 

 — as it is termed — towards migration, and that it is 

 characteristic of every other nation as well as our 

 own. "Migration is humorously described as the 

 tendency of the rural population towards large towns, 

 being really the tendency of water to flow uphill when 

 forced by machinery."^ The tattle about "natural 

 tendency " becomes futile and evasive when the real 

 condition of the labourer is considered. "The rest- 



^ " Tess," Thomas Hardy. 



