64 PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE 



their industrious peasantry is being constantly 

 drained by emigration to the Argentine and 

 the United States ; and even the barren 

 hinterland of Tripoli is held out as a refuge 

 from the intolerable conditions of village life 

 in the peninsula. 



While the great majority of our labourers 

 who abandon the country districts find their 

 way into the towns, an increasing stream of 

 emigrants leave the villages for Canada, 

 Australia and the United States. According 

 to Mr. Rowntree the emigration figures for 

 adult agricultural labourers have risen from 

 9000 in 1906 to 33,000 in 1911 which means 

 that " about one out of every forty agri- 

 culturists found his prospects in this country 

 so poor that he decided to quit the country 

 altogether." 



The facts then of rural depopulation are 

 patent and undisputed : and the significance 

 of this " exodus " is especially serious amongst 

 ourselves. An insular nation, liable by the 

 fortunes of war to be cut off to a greater or 

 smaller degree from sea-borne food, seems 

 undismayed by the reflection that its available 

 supplies would not extend beyond two months, 

 and that long before that limit were reached 

 a state of almost unthinkable misery would 

 supervene in the crowded streets and slums of 



