Lessons of the Census
THE Registrar-General has taken six years to formu- late his conclusions regarding the Census of 1921, but his final Report, though belated, is of high importance. It makes us realize, to begin with, how thoroughly urbanized England and Wales have become. Four persons out of every five live in cities, towns or urban districts ; two persons out of every five live in the great cities. Furthermore, our vast population, numbering 37,886,699 in 1921, is now denser than that of any other civilized country. We have 649 inhabitants for every square mile, or one for every acre. The bare figures show that the old rural England, which many of us subcon- sciously regard as still existing, is gone for ever. The revival of agriculture is desirable for many reasons, but the Census should remind us that the rural problem, however important, is not comparable in magnitude or urgency with the urban problems that affect four-fifths of our people. In William the Fourth's day, when only one person in every three lived in a town, it was possible to give priority to questions of tenure and tillage. Even in 1851, when the proportion of town-dwellers had risen to a half, their needs might still be overlooked. But we are now compelled to recognize the overwhelming pre- dominance of the city or town, and to treat the countryside as an adjunct to the centres where most of our people live and work. This means, from a political standpoint, that the purely agricultural vote can no longer decide elections. On a wider view it illustrates the necessity for a thorough reconsideration of present methods of city government, upon which the welfare of so many millions depends.
It has long been known that, as London—Cobbett's " Great Wen "—spreads outward over the Home Counties, the population of its inner districts tends to decline. In 1921 the difference between the day population and the night population of the City and the inner boroughs was over 800,000. This multitude, apart from shoppers, theatre-goers, and other casual travellers, has to be transported to and fro daily, often over long distances, between home and office or workshop. And as the years go by, the numbers thus to be moved must increase, to the confusion and despair of those who try to provide for the traffic. Here is a fundamental problem of modern city life which has yet to be faced in all its immensity. Queen Elizabeth tried to impose limits on the growth of London but failed. And even if some masterful states- man could encircle our Greater London with a broad belt of parks and fields, the transit question, with all that it means for a myriad workers, would remain for solution. There is a gleam of hope, as far as other• places are con- cerned, in the Registrar-General's remark that towns increase rapidly until they have a population of 100,000 and afterwards grow more slowly. He infers that this round number " roughly marks a limit of effective aggregation beyond which the advantage of further accretion begins to be offset by counterbalancing disadvantages." To put it simply, the inhabitants of a small town can get from one end of it to the other without much loss of time and can know all about its local affairs. Yet to impose an arbitrary check on the growth of the small towns would be difficult, and would be contrary to the recent practice of Parliament which is always sanction- ing amalgamations and making large cities larger still.
The growth of the urban population has necessarily aggravated the housing difficulty. It is somewhat surprising to learn, however, that the total number of habitable rooms, relative to the population, was greater in 1921 than in 1911. But the explanation is that, as the average family is now smaller and therefore able to pay more in rent, the small families have taken up more of the available accommodation than they had at the earlier date. The larger families have thus been compelled to crowd into inadequate quarters. Therefore we find that overcrowding—legally defined as existing when there are more than two occupants for each room in a house—affected 9.6 per cent. of the people in 1921, as compared with 9.1 per cent. ten years before. h London the proportion of overcrowded persons wag sixteen per cent., and in Northumberland and Durham, where two-roomed and even one-roomed cottages are all too common, the proportion rose to thirty per cent. —a terrible figure which suggests all too clearly why wild revolutionary doctrines find there a ready hearing. Overcrowding is not solely an urban problem, but it is most acute in our large cities, and neither there nor elsewhere will it be abolished merely by the building of new houses, since it is too often the direct outcome of poverty and unemployment.
In view of the stupendous responsibilities which the nation has to shoulder, we cannot honestly share the Registrar General's satisfaction at the fact that our population increased more rapidly, despite the War, than did the populations of other European countries which were also engaged in the conflict. We lost a million or more of our sailors and soldiers, and the birth- rate naturally fell during the War years. Yet, thanks to better sanitation, better medical attention, and better food, the civil population continued to grow, because the death-rate was steadily declining. It is, of course, a good thing that the expectation of life is now far greater than ever before, and that child mortality in particular has been reduced to a surprising extent. In London a century and a half ago three-fourthi of the children born died before they reached their fifth birth- day. That terrible wastage of young life has long since been checked. But now that people live much longer lives, on the average, than their forefathers did, we may surely decline to lament over the steady fall in the birth-rate or the growing prevalence of the small family. It is stated in the Census Report that, fok all married men taken together, the average family consists of 1:27 children apiece. Over forty-three per cent. of the married men had no children under sixteen. Another twenty-three per cent. had only one child each. Even among miners, who are notably prolific, the average family for each married man was only 1.82, while among the professional class the average was only .90. . generation ago these figures would have occasioned grave misgiving. It was the custom then to lament over the declining birth-rate and the typical small family in France, and to compare the happier conditions of England. We are now slowly but surely reaching the same plane of national development as France attained half a century back, and we may well begin to see that it has its beneficent side. This small and densely crowded country of ours cannot support a population mud exceeding that which we have at present. Nor en the average man, in an era of high prices and ertislini taxation, bring up a large family in comfort.
Lastly, we may draw attention to the two transito but none the less serious results of the War, namelY' the preponderance of middle-aged and ord men and the very large surplus of women. It is pathetic to recall the talk of a few years back about the coming of gout into power when, if the truth were known, youth had never less chance of being heard. Every year that passes helps us to understand more fully the extent to -which our English youth was sacrificed in the War. Hundreds of thousands of the young men who would now be in their prime died on the battlefield, and our professions, our manufactures and our trade are all suffering for the loss. Moreover, those men were the destined husbands of the women who must now remain unwed. In 1921 there were 1,470 unmarried women for every 1,000 bachelors between the ages of thirty and thirty-five--figures that hide an infinity of blighted hopes. The surplus of women had risen in the decades from 1,200,000 to 1,700,000. The grant of full suffrage rights, irrespective of sex, will merely accord with the fact that women are now in a considerable majority. For the next twenty years or so public opinion will be moulded by the women and by middle-aged men. After that, no doubt, the normal balance of age and sex will be restored. But the period of transition must have its special difficulties, social no less than economic and political. The Census is valuable because it warns us of these.
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