THE DRIFT TO THE CITIES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5656, 29 August 1896, Page 7

THE DRIFT TO THE CITIES.

While the population of Prance is almost stationary, Paris keeps growing at a rapid rate. Berlin has, during the last decade

grown more rapidly than any other city on the face of the globe. In the United States of America the drift of population to the large cities is as pronounced, and much more portentous than it is in the Old World. The British Vice-Consul at Chicago, commenting recently on this phenomenon in the course of a report, made the following remarks: — "The startling statement is made on good authority that in the four great agricultural States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and lowa half the townships were less populous in 1890 than in 1880, while the large cities had greatly increased in size. There was a corresponding diminution of the number of productive enterprises carried on in rural districts. The result is abandoned farms on the one hand, and overcrowded trades in the cities on the other; and also an increase in the cost of food through diminished production, and a lowering of wages through over-competition." The official quoted goes on to state the reasons assigned for this state of things, such as the unreinunerative nature of fanning pursuits and the oppression of railway companies ; but these cannot do more than partially explain a^tendency that is general, and is not confined to any particular country. An American authority lately gave some startling illustrations of the results of congested city life. Professor G. Stanley Hall states that by careful individual study he found that 60 per cent of the six-year-old children attending the schools of Boston had never seen a robin, 18 per cent had never seen a cow, some thinking a cow to be as big as their thumb, thus making mere verbal cram of all instruction received about milk, cheese, butter, leather, &c. Seventy per cent had never seen growing corn or potatoes, primers generally presuppose, the percentage of ignorance of Nature was such as to give pathos to the idea of some that good people when they die go to the country." In New Zealand, Nature has favoured us so far by making us of necessity live far apart and follow rural pursuits to a large extent, but even here our urban population grows in a more rapid ratio than the rural. By means of cheap railway excursions for school children, our town-bred children are saved from the deplorable ignorance shown by those of Boston ; but, in all probability, the same excursions, by bringing country children into temporary contact with the allurements of town life, may intensify the tendency of humanity to flock together. It is vain to fight against a world-wide tendency of the human race, but as there are many evils associated with city life, it ought to be the aim of legislative and social reformers to minimise those evils by creating industrial and other conditions in towns that will tend to the preservation of health and morality.