INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. 279 



As everyone knows from Thorold Rogers' 

 work, the growth of the factory system in Eng- 

 land was intimately connected with that enforced 

 exodus. Whole industries, which prospered till 

 then, were killed downright by the forced clear- 

 ing of estates.* The workshops, much more even 

 than the factories, multiply wherever they find 

 cheap labour ; and the specific feature of this 

 country is, that the cheapest labour that is, the 

 greatest number of destitute people is to be 

 found in the great cities. The agitation raised 

 (with no result) in connection with the " Dwellings 

 of the Poor," the " Unemployed," and the 

 " Sweating System," has fully disclosed that 

 characteristic feature of the economic life of 

 England and Scotland ; and the painstaking 

 researches made by Mr. Charles Booth have 

 shown that one-quarter of the population of Lon- 

 donthat is, 1,000,000 out of the 3,800,000 who 

 entered within the scope of his inquest would be 

 happy if the heads of their families could have 

 regular earnings of something like 1 a week all 

 the year round. Half of them would be satis- 

 fied with even less than that. The same state 

 of things was found by Mr. Seebohm Rowntree 

 at York.f Cheap labour is offered in such 

 quantities in the suburbs of all the great cities 



* Thorold Rogers, The Economic Interpretation of History. 

 f Poverty : a Study of Town Life, London (Maomillan), 1901. 



