186 



ERRONEOUS VIEW OF THE NECESSARY DISADVANTAGES 

 OF TOWN LIFE. 



What is of more consequence, however, not merely that we mar 

 avoid injustice to our ancestors, but that we may realize the changes 

 which have occurred in the standard of requirement, with reference 

 to which the merits of a street system are now to he judged, is the 

 fact that when these improvements were devised, it was still pardon- 

 able to take for granted that the larger the population of a town 

 should be allowed to become, the greater would be the inconvenience 

 and danger to which all who ventured to live in it would necessarily 

 be subject, the more they would be exposed to epidemic diseases, 

 the feebler, more sickly, and shorter their lives would be ; the 

 greater would be the danger of sweeping conflagrations ; the larger 

 the proportion of mendicants and criminals, and the more formidable, 

 desperate and dangerous the mobs. 



EVILS OF TOWN-LIFE HAVE DDIINISHED AS TOWNS HAVE 

 GROWN LARGER. 



We now know that these assumptions were entirely fallacious, 

 for, as a matter of fact, towns have gone on increasing until there are 

 many in Europe which are several times larger than the largest of 

 of the middle ages, and in the largest the amount of disease is not 

 more than half as great as it formerly was ; the chance of living to 

 old age is much more than twice as great ; epidemics are less fre- 

 quent, less malignant and more controllable ; sweeping fires are less 

 common, less devastating and are much sooner got under ; ruffians 

 are much better held in check ; mobs are less frequently formed, are 

 less dangerous, and, when they arise, are suppressed more quickly 

 and with less bloodshed ; there is a smaller proportion of the popu- 

 lation given over to vice and crime and a vastly larger proportion of 

 well-educated, orderly, industrious and well-to-do citizens. These 

 things are true, in the main, not of one town alone, but of every con- 

 siderable town, from Turkey on the one side to China on the other, 

 and the larger each town has grown, the greater, on an average, has 

 been the gain. Even in Mahomedan Cairo, chiefly through the 

 action of French engineers, the length of life of each inhabitant has, 

 on an average, been doubled. The question, then, very naturally 

 occurs : " What are the causes and conditions of this amelioration, 

 and can it be expected to continue ? 



REASON FOR ANTICIPATING AN ACCELERATED ENLARGE- 

 MENT OF METROPOLITAN TOWNS. 



If the enormous advance in the population of great towns which 



