The elements of vital statistics / by Arthur Newsholme.

  • Arthur Newsholme
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The elements of vital statistics / by Arthur Newsholme. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    28/380 (page 14)
    The general result is that towns and manufacturing districts everywhere grow more rapidly than rural districts. This is a necessary consequence of the rigidly limited amount of land available for agriculture, and the practically unlimited amount of material available for manufacturing processes. * Dr. Longstaff has investigated the same subject from an inter- national standpoint, f and shows that for the last forty years in every country throughout the world, new and old alike, the towns, and especially the large toAvns, have increased in population more rapidly than the rest of the country. . . . The causes, wliatever they may be, alfect alike Celt and Anglo-Saxon, Teuton, Latin, and Magyar. There can be little doubt that one chief cause of this tendency for the population to aggregate in towns is the greater pleasure and excitement enjoyed by toAvnspeople. Dr. Longstaff points out that improved communications are the chief exciting cause which render this greater urban aggregation practi- cable. With the improved means of locomotion must be associated the enormously increased use of machinery in every department of industry. The fact that corn can now be brought from Canada or Russia cheaper than it can be produced in England, tends to the same result. Gradually each country is becoming readjusted to produce the greatest amount of material at the expenditure of the smallest amount of labour, Avhether it be corn or manufactured goods, and the improved means of communication, national and international, enable this to be done, almost irrespective of distance, and deternune the preponderance of urban or rural population. Birth-Places of the Population. The statistics as to birth- places of the population throw much incidental light on the question of migration. Thus at the two last enumerations, out of every 10,000 persons in England and Wales enumerated there were— Birtli-place. England and Wales .... Scotland ...... Ireland Islands in British Seas British Colonics or Dependencies Foreign parts (British subjects and foreigners) At sea * Dr. Ogle on The Alleged Depopulation of the Rural Districts of England, Jour. Statist. Soc, June, 1889. t Rural Depopulation, Joior. Statist. Soc, Sept., 1893. In 18S1. 111 1891. 9,570 98 9,614 97 216 158 11 11 36 38 67 80 2 2 10,000 10,000