CHAPTER VIII. 

 DECREASE OF OVERCROWDING. 



THERE are two principal reasons for the gratifying 

 circumstance that there is, throughout the agricultural 

 districts of England at any rate, a slight decrease in the 

 overcrowding of cottages which was so disgraceful a 

 feature of so many of our rural villages forty years 

 ago. This improvement has been more marked in 

 the West of England, to which some of our Appendix 

 chapters especially refer. One of these reasons is the 

 appreciable increase in more sanitary dwellings ; the 

 other is the less satisfactory decline in the rural popula- 

 tion brought about by the untempting conditions of 

 an agricultural labourer's life for, in spite of the 

 increase in wages that has taken place during the same 

 period, the fact remains that the cultivation of the soil 

 in this country does not furnish, now, attractions suffi- 

 cient to prevent the steady stream of migration to the 

 towns, and emigration to our colonies and elsewhere. 



Although actual figures are not available except 

 from the last published census return (1901), there has 

 been sufficient evidence forthcoming to prove that the 

 process of diminution of the rural and urban labouring 

 population has been going pretty steadily on only 

 checked in some places by exceptionally favourable 

 conditions of employment. The most noticeable and 

 significant of these favourable conditions has been the 

 existence in particular districts of a really good allotment 



system. Of this important question of allotments; 



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