THE GREAT PROBLEM OF THE MAR FUTURE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1649, 30 August 1887, Page 2

THE GREAT PROBLEM OF THE MAR FUTURE.

(" Nineteenth Centary. J ') The population of Great Britain ia at the present moment being added to at the rate of at least 1000 persona a day, or m the words of the Registrar-General, "it reoeives every ten years an accestrion equal to the whole population of London." In connection with this enormous growth two points deserve to be noted. The disproportion of the sexes, m itself a serious evil, is slowly but steadily increasing The distribution of the population is undergoing a sensible chagge. The towns (except where some special cause is at work) are everywhere growing. " The rural population is either standing still or actually diminishing. The metropolis alone receives every week an addition of more than 1000 persons, and the cry H v Still they come V' In the case of London, and of other large cities the *' natural increment " is swelled by the crowds who pour into them from every part of the world . Most of these immigrants are unskilled workpeople, or bring what craft they possess to an enormously overstocked • market. It does not require the harrowing realism of Mr George Sims or the plotare* sque pen of Mr Walter Besanfc to prote ■ that where, as m the East End of London--the supply of workers ia constantly over-' ' >■ taking the supply of work, wages will bar driven down to starvation point. When we hear of women working all day and half Ihe night ia order to earn 3d or 44 by making a pair of trousers, and 24 by i making a pair of full sized sheets and i having to find the " extras " for them- | aeives— when we are told ihat Id U oonsidered a handsome remuneration foff filling 144 boxes of raoifer matohea— w» are tempted to ask :~-Is this life I Is. It i the kind of exlstenoe Into which any , reasonable being would, if he or sht ware. . giveu any choice m the tnatter, desire to •■ be born ? Yet there are myriads of one countrymen and countrywomen whole only proapeot to eioape from suoh an ex* : iatenoe Is the workhouse or the grave, I am not speaking now of that destitution ? which springs from temporary deprenioft of trade, or of that whioh Is perhapa inßeparable from every state of human society, but of that whioh is directly due to the fact that 50,000 persons an huddled together m a locality where ; there is not work or room for half that ' number. ' ' >