CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES 439 



contact with the local authority concerned : the latter, if sympathetic, may 

 refrain from action that might impede the efforts of an energetic local 

 society. 



We are all well enough aware that if every area in England possessed an 

 active and influential local society and if every local society could rely on 

 the support of its own municipal, or county, or district, or parish council, 

 there would still be no assurance that the amenities of a single local area 

 could be preserved : there are difficulties with which neither local authorities 

 nor local societies can cope. 



The main cause of these difficulties is a divergence of interest on the part 

 of dwellers in towns and on that of ' those that reside much in the country.' 

 This fact was familiar to classical authors ; in this country it inspired that 

 ' Song of Corydon ' so effectively recited by the President of the Council for 

 the Preservation of Rural England in his address on ' The Personality of 

 English Scenery ' ; we can detect its influence in the letters written by 

 Mr. White of Selborne during the early phases of the Industrial Revolution. 

 For the moment, however, we are more concerned with modern manifesta- 

 tions than with the earlier history of this divergence of interest which, for 

 a brief period, was so completely suppressed that we may be justified in 

 considering its present prevalence as neither a survival nor a recrudescence, 

 but as a new manifestation the origin of which deserves consideration. 



The temporary disappearance of the ancient divergence of urban and 

 rural interests which, it is fair to admit, was most warmly expressed by those 

 who lived in the country, was one of the consequences of an appeal to English 

 rural economy made by the captains of industry in manufacturing towns 

 who were directly responsible for that Industrial Revolution which has done 

 so much, since the days of the Rev. Gilbert White, to destroy the amenities 

 and the flora and the fauna of the countryside by creating clouds of smoke 

 that obscure the sun, discharging acrid fumes that vitiate the air, emitting 

 fetid waste that pollutes our streams, and heaping barren mine tailings on 

 what once was fertile soil. If those who cared for the amenities of their 

 own areas at first failed to realise what the effect of these industrial activities 

 must be, they were afforded a prolonged opportunity of appreciating the 

 force of the saying that ' what cannot be cured must be endured.' This 

 endurance had to continue till those who seek knowledge for its own sake 

 brought partial relief by convincing captains of industry that they could 

 reduce their costs if they consumed their smoke and might increase their 

 gains if they turned some of their waste to economic account. 



The migration to manufacturing towns of an appreciable proportion of 

 the population of the countryside, which was another consequence of the 

 Industrial Revolution, explains the appeal made by urban interests to rural 

 economy for food to meet the needs of workers in towns no longer able to 

 share in the task of raising food for themselves. The very change in social 

 conditions which induced this urban appeal helps to explain the readiness of 

 the response made to it by rural economy. But compliance with the request 

 involved extension of cultivation ; extension of cultivation involved the 

 issue of legislative injunction for the tillage of manorial waste, and the grant 

 of legislative sanction for the enclosure of common land. Mere extension 

 proving insufficient, English agriculture adopted the intensive methods of 

 cultivation whose continued improvement has characterised its practice, 

 through good report and ill, ever since. This has gone on, not only at 

 home but in our overseas possessions, and not only in raising food for British 

 workers but in supplying much of the raw material that has made British 

 work possible since the Industrial Revolution began . Thanks to this activity, 

 the divergence of interest between rural and urban dwellers, of which the 



