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Anticipations Chapter 2 Part 1 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter two A of Anticipations. This is a LibriVox recording.
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Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Anticipations
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Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells, Chapter two A. The probable diffusion
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Speaker 1: of great cities. Now, the velocity at which a man
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Speaker 1: and his belongings may pass about the Earth is in
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Speaker 1: itself a very trivial matter, indeed, but it involves certain
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Speaker 1: other matters not at all trivial, standing indeed, in an
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Speaker 1: almost fundamental relation to human society. It will be the
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Speaker 1: business of this chapter to discuss the relation between the
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Speaker 1: social order and the available means of transit, and to
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Speaker 1: attempt to deduce from the principles elucidated the coming phases
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Speaker 1: in that extraordinary expansion, shifting, and internal redistribution of population
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Speaker 1: that has been so conspicuous during the last hundred years.
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Speaker 1: Let us consider the broad features of the redistribution of
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Speaker 1: the population that has characterized the nineteenth century. It may
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Speaker 1: be summarized as an unusual growth of great cities and
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Speaker 1: a slight tendency to depopulation in the country. The growth
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Speaker 1: of the great cities is the essential phenomenon. These aggregates
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Speaker 1: having populations of from eight hundred thousand upward to four
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Speaker 1: and five millions, are certainly so far as the world
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Speaker 1: outside the limits of the Chinese Empire goes, entirely an
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Speaker 1: unprecedented thing. Never before, outside the valleys of the three
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Speaker 1: great Chinese rivers, has any city, with the exception of
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Speaker 1: Rome and perhaps but very doubtfully of Babylon, certainly had
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Speaker 1: more than a million inhabitants. And it is at least
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Speaker 1: permissible to doubt whether the population of Rome, in spite
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Speaker 1: of its exacting attribute of sea born food from the
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Speaker 1: whole of the Mediterranean basin, exceeded a million for any
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Speaker 1: great length of time. Footnote. It is true that many
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Speaker 1: scholars estimate a high water mark for the Roman population
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Speaker 1: in excess of two millions, and one daring authority, by
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Speaker 1: throwing out suburbs add Leabetum into the Campagna, suburbs of
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Speaker 1: which no trace remains, has raised the two to ten.
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Speaker 1: The Colosseum could no doubt seat over eighty thousand spectators.
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Speaker 1: The circuit of the bench frontage of the Circus Maximus
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Speaker 1: was very nearly a mile in length, and the Romans
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Speaker 1: of Imperial times certainly used ten times as much water
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Speaker 1: as the modern Romans. But on the other hand, habits change,
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Speaker 1: and Rome as it is defined by lines drawn at
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Speaker 1: the times of its greatest descendancy. The city that is
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Speaker 1: enclosed by the walls of Aurelian and including all the
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Speaker 1: regiones of Augustus, an enclosure from which there could have
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Speaker 1: been no reason for excluding half or more of its population,
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Speaker 1: could have scarcely contained a million. It would have packed
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Speaker 1: very comfortably within the circle of the Grand Boulevard of Paris.
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Speaker 1: The parish that is of Louis the fourteenth with a
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Speaker 1: population five hundred and sixty thousand, and the Rome of
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Speaker 1: today were the houses that spread so densely over the
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Speaker 1: once vacant Campus Martias, distributed in the now deserted spaces
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Speaker 1: in the south and east, and the Vatican suburb replaced
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Speaker 1: within the ancient walls, would quite fill the ancient limits,
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Speaker 1: in spite of the fact that the population is under
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Speaker 1: five hundred thousand. But these are incidental doubts on a
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Speaker 1: very authoritative opinion, and whatever their value, they do not
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Speaker 1: greatly affect the significance of these new great cities, which
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Speaker 1: have a risen all over the world, as if by
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Speaker 1: the operation of a natural law, as the railways have
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Speaker 1: developed end footnote. But there are now ten town aggregates
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Speaker 1: having a population of over a million, nearly twenty that
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Speaker 1: bid fair to reach that limit in the next decade,
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Speaker 1: and a great number at or approaching a quarter of
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Speaker 1: a million. We call these towns and cities, but indeed
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Speaker 1: they are of a different order of things to the
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Speaker 1: towns and cities of the eighteenth century world. Concurrently with
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Speaker 1: the aggregation of people about this new sort of center
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Speaker 1: there has been it is alleged, a depletion of the
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Speaker 1: country villages and small townships. But so far as the
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Speaker 1: counting of heads goes, this depletion is not nearly so
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Speaker 1: marked as the growth of the great towns. Relatively, however,
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Speaker 1: it is striking enough. Now, is this growth of large
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Speaker 1: towns really, as one may allege, a result of the
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Speaker 1: development of railways in the world, or is it simply
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Speaker 1: a change in human circumstances that happens to have arisen
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Speaker 1: at the same time. It needs only a very general
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Speaker 1: review of the conditions of the distribution of population to
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Speaker 1: realize that the former is probably the true answer. It
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Speaker 1: will be convenient to make the issue part of a
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Speaker 1: more general proposition, namely that the general distribution of populations
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Speaker 1: in a country must always be directly dependent on transport facilities.
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Speaker 1: To illustrate this point, roughly, we may build up an
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Speaker 1: imaginary simple community by considering its needs over an arable countryside,
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Speaker 1: for example, inhabited by a people who had attained to
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Speaker 1: a level of agricultural civilization in which war was no
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Speaker 1: longer constantly imminent. The population would be diffused primarily by
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Speaker 1: families and groups in farmsteads. It might, if it were
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Speaker 1: a very simple population, be almost all so distributed. But
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Speaker 1: even the simplest agriculturists find a certain convenience in trade.
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Speaker 1: Certain definite points would be convenient for such local trade
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Speaker 1: and intercourse as the people found desirable. And here it
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Speaker 1: is that there would arise the germ of a town.
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Speaker 1: At first, it might be no more than an appointed
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Speaker 1: meeting place a market square, But an inn and a
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Speaker 1: blacksmith would inevitably follow. An altar perhaps, And if these
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Speaker 1: people had writing even some sort of school, it would
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Speaker 1: have to be where water was found, and it would
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Speaker 1: have to be generally convenient of access to its attendant farmers. Now,
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Speaker 1: if this meeting place was more than a certain distance
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Speaker 1: from any particular farm, it would be inconvenient for that
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Speaker 1: farmer to get himself and his produce there and back
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Speaker 1: and do his business in a comfortable daylight. He would
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Speaker 1: not be able to come, and instead he would either
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Speaker 1: have to go to some other nearer center to trade
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Speaker 1: and gossip with his neighbors, or, failing this not go
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Speaker 1: at all. Evidently, then there would be a maximum distance
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Speaker 1: between such places. This distance in England, where traffic has
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Speaker 1: been mainly horse traffic for many centuries, seems to have
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Speaker 1: worked out according to the gradients and so forth, at
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Speaker 1: from eight to fifteen miles. And at such distances do
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Speaker 1: we find the country towns. While the horseless man, the
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Speaker 1: surf and the labourer and labouring wench have marked their
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Speaker 1: narrow limits in the distribution of the intervening villages. If
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Speaker 1: by chance these gathering places have arisen at points much
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Speaker 1: closer than the sue maximum, they have come into competition,
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Speaker 1: and one has finally got the better of the other,
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Speaker 1: so that in England the distribution is often singularly uniform.
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Speaker 1: Agricultural districts have their towns at about eight miles, and
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Speaker 1: where grazing takes the place of the plow, the town
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Speaker 1: distances increase to fifteen footnote. It will be plain that
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Speaker 1: such towns must have clearly defined limits of population, dependent
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Speaker 1: finally on the minimum yearly produce of the district they control.
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Speaker 1: If ever they rise above that limit, the natural checks
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Speaker 1: of famine and of pestilence following in feeblementt will come
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Speaker 1: into operation, and they will always be kept near this
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Speaker 1: limit by the natural tendency of humanity to increase. The
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Speaker 1: limit would rise with increasing public intelligence, and the organization
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Speaker 1: of the towns would become more definite. End footnote. And
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Speaker 1: so it is entirely as a multiple of horse and
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Speaker 1: foot strides that all the villages and towns of the
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Speaker 1: world's countryside have been plotted out. Footnote. I owe the
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Speaker 1: fertilizing suggestion of this general principle to a paper by
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Speaker 1: Grant Allen that I read long ago in Longman's magazine.
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Speaker 1: End a footnote. A third and almost final factor determining
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Speaker 1: town distribution in a world without railways would be the
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Speaker 1: sea port and the navigable river ports would grow into
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Speaker 1: dimensions dependent on the population of the conveniently accessible coasts
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Speaker 1: or river banks, and on the quality and quantity of
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Speaker 1: their products, and near these ports, as the conveniences of
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Speaker 1: civilization increased, would appear handicraft towns, the largest possible towns
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Speaker 1: of a foot and horse civilization, with industries of such
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Speaker 1: a nature as the produce of their coasts required. It
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Speaker 1: was always in connection with a port or navigable river
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Speaker 1: that the greater towns of the pre railway period arose
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Speaker 1: a day's journey away from the coast when sea attack
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Speaker 1: was probable, and she sifting to the coast itself when
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Speaker 1: that ceased to threaten such sea trading. Handicraft towns as Bruges, Venice,
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Speaker 1: Corinth or London were the largest towns of the vanishing
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Speaker 1: order of things. Very rarely, except in China, did they
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Speaker 1: clamber above a quarter of a million inhabitants, even though
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Speaker 1: to some of them there was presently added court and camp.
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Speaker 1: In China, however, a gigantic river and canal system laced
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Speaker 1: across plains of extraordinary fertility, has permitted the growth of
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Speaker 1: several city aggregates with populations exceeding a million, and, in
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Speaker 1: the case of the hang Kaw Trinity of cities exceeding
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Speaker 1: five million people. In all these cases, the position and
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Speaker 1: the population limit was entirely determined by the accessibility of
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Speaker 1: the town and the area it could dominate for the
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Speaker 1: purposes of trade. And not only were the commercial or
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Speaker 1: natural towns so determined, but the political centres were also
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Speaker 1: finally chosen for strategic considerations, in a word, communictions. And
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Speaker 1: now perhaps the real significance of the previous paper, in
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Speaker 1: which sea velocities of fifty miles an hour and land
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Speaker 1: travel at the rate of one hundred and even cab
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Speaker 1: and omnibus journeys of thirty or forty miles were shown
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Speaker 1: to be possible, becomes more apparent. At the first sight,
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Speaker 1: it might appear as though the result of the new
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Speaker 1: developments was simply to increase the number of giant cities
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Speaker 1: in the world by rendering them possible in regions where
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Speaker 1: they had hitherto been impossible, concentrating the trade of vast
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Speaker 1: areas in a manner that had hitherto been entirely characteristic
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Speaker 1: of navigable waters. It might seem as though the state
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Speaker 1: of affairs in China, in which population has been concentrated
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Speaker 1: about densely congested million cities with pauper masses public charities,
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Speaker 1: and a crowded struggle for existence for many hundreds of
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Speaker 1: years was merely to be extended over the whole world.
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Speaker 1: We have heard so much of the problem of our
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Speaker 1: great cities. We have the impressive statistics of their growth.
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Speaker 1: The belief in the inevitableness of yet denser and more
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Speaker 1: multitudinous agglomerations in the future is so widely diffused that
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Speaker 1: at first sight it will be thought that no other
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Speaker 1: motive than a wish to startle can dictate the proposition
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Speaker 1: that not only will many of these railway begotten giant
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Speaker 1: cities reach their maximum in the commencing sentry, but that
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Speaker 1: in all probability they, and not only they, but their
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Speaker 1: water borne prototypes in the east, also are destined to
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Speaker 1: such a process of dissection and diffusion as to amount
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Speaker 1: almost to obliteration so far at least as the blot
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Speaker 1: on the map goes, with an immeasurable further space of years.
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Speaker 1: In advancing this proposition, the present writer is disagreeably aware
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Speaker 1: that in this matter he has expressed views entirely opposed
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Speaker 1: to those he now propounds, and in setting forth the
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Speaker 1: following body of considerations, he tells the story of his
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Speaker 1: own disillusionment at the outset he took for granted, and
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Speaker 1: very naturally he wishes to imagine that a great number
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Speaker 1: of other people do also take for granted. That the
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Speaker 1: future of London, for example, is largely to be got
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Speaker 1: as the answer to a sort of rule of three.
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Speaker 1: Some if in one hundred years the population of London
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Speaker 1: has been multiplied by seven, then in two hundred years
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Speaker 1: and one proceeds to pack the answer in gigantic tenement
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Speaker 1: houses looming upon colossal roofed streets, provide it with moving ways,
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Speaker 1: the only available transit appliances suited to such dense multitudes,
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Speaker 1: and develop its manners and morals in accordance with the
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Speaker 1: laws that will always prevail amidst overcrowded humanity so long
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Speaker 1: as humanity endures. The picture of the swarming, concentrated humanity
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Speaker 1: has some effective possibilities, But unhappily, if instead of that
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Speaker 1: obvious rule of three sum, one resorts to an analysis
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Speaker 1: of operating causes, its plausibility crumbles away, and it gives
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Speaker 1: place to an altogether different forecast forecast. Indeed, that is
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Speaker 1: an almost violent contrast to the first anticipation. It is
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Speaker 1: much more probable that these coming cities will not be
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Speaker 1: in the old sense cities at all. They will present
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Speaker 1: a new and entirely different phase of human distribution. The
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Speaker 1: determining factor in the appearance of great cities in the past,
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Speaker 1: and indeed up to the present day, has been the
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Speaker 1: meeting of two or more transit lines, the confluence of
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Speaker 1: two or more streams of trade and easy communication. The
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Speaker 1: final limit to the size and importance of the great
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Speaker 1: city has been the commercial sphere of influence commanded by
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Speaker 1: that city, the capacity of the alluvial basin of its commerce,
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Speaker 1: so to speak, the volume of its river of trade.
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Speaker 1: About the meeting point so determined, the population so determined
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Speaker 1: has grouped itself, And this is the point I overlooked
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Speaker 1: in those previous vaticinations. In accordance with laws that are
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Speaker 1: also considerations of transit. The economic center of the city
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Speaker 1: is formed, of course by the wharves and landing places,
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Speaker 1: and in the case of railway fed cities, by the
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Speaker 1: termini where passengers land and where goods are landed, stored,
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Speaker 1: and distributed. Both the administrative and business community traders, employers, clerks,
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Speaker 1: and so forth, must be within a convenient access of
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Speaker 1: this center, and the families, servants, tradesmen, amusement purveyors dependent
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Speaker 1: on these again must also come within a maximum distance.
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Speaker 1: At a certain stage and town growth, the pressure on
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Speaker 1: the more central area would become too great for habitual
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Speaker 1: family life there, and an office region would differentiate from
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Speaker 1: an outer region of homes. Beyond these two zones, again,
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Speaker 1: those whose connection with the great city was merely intermittent
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Speaker 1: would constitute a system of suburban houses and areas. But
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Speaker 1: the grouping of these also would be determined finally by
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Speaker 1: the convenience of access to the dominant center. That secondary literary, social, political,
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Speaker 1: or military may arise about the initial trade center complicates
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Speaker 1: the application, but does not alter the principle here stated.
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Speaker 1: They must all be within striking distance. The day of
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Speaker 1: twenty four hours is an inexorable human condition, and up
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Speaker 1: to the present time, all intercourse and business has been
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Speaker 1: broken into spells of definite duration by intervening nights. Moreover,
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Speaker 1: almost all effective intercourse has involved personal presence at the
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Speaker 1: point where intercourse occurs. The possibility therefore of going and
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Speaker 1: coming and doing that day's work has hitherto fixed the
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Speaker 1: extreme limits to which a city could grow, and has
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Speaker 1: exacted a compactness which has always been very undesirable, and
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Speaker 1: which is now, for the first time in the world's history,
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Speaker 1: no longer imperative. So far as we can judge without
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Speaker 1: a close and uncongenial scrutiny of statistics, that daily journey
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Speaker 1: that has governed, and still to a very considerable extent,
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Speaker 1: governs the growth of cities has had, and probably always
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Speaker 1: will have a maximum limit of two hours one hour
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Speaker 1: each way from sleeping place to council chamber, counter, workroom
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Speaker 1: or office stool. And taking this assumption as sound, we
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Speaker 1: can state precisely the maximum area of various types of town.
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Speaker 1: A pedestrian agglomeration such as we find in China, and
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Speaker 1: such as most of the European towns probably were before
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Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, would be swept entirely by a radius
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Speaker 1: of four miles about the business quarter and industrial centre.
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Speaker 1: And under these circumstances, where the area of the feeding
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Speaker 1: regions has been very large, the massing of human beings
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Speaker 1: has probably reached its extreme limit. Footnote. It is worth
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Speaker 1: remarking that in eighteen hundred one the density of population
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Speaker 1: in the city of London was half as dense, again
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Speaker 1: as that of any district, even of the densest slum
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Speaker 1: districts today end footnote. Of course, in the case of
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Speaker 1: a navigable river for a day example, the commercial center
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Speaker 1: might be elongated into a line, and the circle of
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Speaker 1: the city modified into an ellipse with a long diameter
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Speaker 1: considerably exceeding eight miles, as for example, in the case
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Speaker 1: of hang Quau. If now horseflesh is brought into the problem,
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Speaker 1: an outer radius of six or eight miles from the
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Speaker 1: centre will define a larger area in which the carriage folk,
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Speaker 1: the hackney uses, the omnibus customers and their domestics and
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Speaker 1: domestic camp followers may live and still be members of
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Speaker 1: the city. Towards that limit. London was already probably moving
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Speaker 1: at the accession of Queen Victoria, and it was clearly
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Speaker 1: the absolute limit of urban growth until locomotive mechanisms capable
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Speaker 1: of more than eight miles an hour could be constructed.
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Speaker 1: And then there came suddenly the railway and the steamship,
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Speaker 1: the former opening with extraordinary abruptness a series of vast
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Speaker 1: through routes for trade, the latter enormously increasing the security
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Speaker 1: and economy of the traffic on the old water route.
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Speaker 1: For a time, neither of these inventions was applied to
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Speaker 1: the needs of the intra urban transit at all. For
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Speaker 1: a time they were purely centripetal forces. They worked simply
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Speaker 1: to increase the general volume of trade, to increase, that is,
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Speaker 1: the pressure of population upon the urban centers. As a consequence,
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Speaker 1: the social history of the middle and later thirds of
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Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, not simply in England, but all over
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Speaker 1: the civilized world, is the history of a gigantic rush
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Speaker 1: of population into the magic radius of for most people
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Speaker 1: four miles to suffer their physical and moral disaster, less acute,
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Speaker 1: but finally far more appalling to the imagination than any
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Speaker 1: famine or pestilence that ever swept the world. Well, has
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Speaker 1: mister George Gissing named nineteenth century London in one of
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Speaker 1: his great novels, The Whirlpool, the very figure for the
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Speaker 1: nineteenth century great city, attractive, tumultuous, and spinning down to death.
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Speaker 1: But indeed these great cities are no permanent maelstroms. These
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Speaker 1: new forces, at present, still so potently centripetal in their influence,
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Speaker 1: bring with them, nevertheless, the distinct promise of a centrifugal
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Speaker 1: application that may be finely equal to the complete reduction
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Speaker 1: of all our present congestions. The limit of the pre
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Speaker 1: railway city was the limit of man and horse. But
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Speaker 1: already that limit has been exceeded, and each day brings
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Speaker 1: us nearer to the time when it will be thrust
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Speaker 1: outward in every direction with an effect of enormous relief.
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Speaker 1: So far, the only additions to the foot and horse
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Speaker 1: of the old dispensation that have actually come into operation
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Speaker 1: are the suburban railways, which render possible an average door
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Speaker 1: to office ours journey of ten or a dozen miles
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Speaker 1: further only in the case of some specially favored localities.
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Speaker 1: The star shaped contour of the modern great city, thrusting
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Speaker 1: out arms along every available railway line, knot at arms
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Speaker 1: of which every knot marks the station, testify sufficiently to
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Speaker 1: the relief of pressure thus afforded. Great towns before this
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Speaker 1: century presented rounded contours and grew as a puffball swells.
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Speaker 1: The modern great city looks like something that has burst
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Speaker 1: an intolerable envelope and splashed. But as our previous paper
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Speaker 1: has sought to make clear, these suburban railways are the
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Speaker 1: mere first rough expedient of far more convenient and rapid developments.
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Speaker 1: We are, as the census returns for nineteen hundred one
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Speaker 1: quite clearly show in the early phase of a great
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Speaker 1: development of centrifugal possibilities. And since it has been shown
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Speaker 1: that a city of pedestrians is inexorably limited by a
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Speaker 1: radius of about four miles, and that a horse using
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Speaker 1: city may grow out to seven or eight, it follows
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Speaker 1: that the available area of a city which can offer
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Speaker 1: a cheap suburban journey of thirty miles an hour is
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Speaker 1: a circle with a radius of thirty miles, And is
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Speaker 1: it too much? Therefore, in view of all that has
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Speaker 1: been adduced in this and the previous paper, to expect
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Speaker 1: that the available area for even the common daily toilers
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Speaker 1: of the great city of the year two thousand or
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Speaker 1: earlier will have a radius very much larger even than that. Now,
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Speaker 1: a circle with a radius of thirty miles gives an
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Speaker 1: area of over twenty eight hundred square miles, which is
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Speaker 1: almost a quarter that of Belgium. But thirty miles is
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Speaker 1: only a very moderate estimate of speed, and the reader
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Speaker 1: of the former paper will agree. I think that the
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Speaker 1: available area for the social equivalent of the favored season
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Speaker 1: ticket holders of to day will have a radius of
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Speaker 1: over one hundred miles and be almost equal to the
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Speaker 1: area of Ireland. Footnote. Be it noted that the phrase
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Speaker 1: available area is used, and various other modifying considerations altogether
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Speaker 1: waived for the present end. Footnote. The radius that will
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Speaker 1: sweep the area available for such as now live in
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Speaker 1: the outer suburbs will include a still vaster area. Indeed,
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Speaker 1: it is not too much to say that the London
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Speaker 1: citizen of the year two thousand a d May have
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Speaker 1: a choice of nearly all England and Wales south of
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Speaker 1: Nottingham and east of Exeter as a suburb, and that
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Speaker 1: the vast stretch of country from Washington to Albany will
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Speaker 1: be all of it available to the active citizen of
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Speaker 1: New York and Philadelphia before that date. This does not,
22:20
Speaker 1: for a moment imply that cities are the density of
22:22
Speaker 1: our existing great cities will spread to these limits. Even
22:26
Speaker 1: if we were to suppose the increase of the populations
22:28
Speaker 1: of the great cities to go on at its present rate,
22:31
Speaker 1: this enormous extension of available area would still mean a
22:35
Speaker 1: great possibility of diffusion. But though most great cities are
22:39
Speaker 1: probably still very far from their maxima. Though the network
22:42
Speaker 1: of feeding railways has still to spread over Africa and China,
22:46
Speaker 1: and though huge areas are still imperfectly productive for want
22:50
Speaker 1: of a cultivating population, Yet it is well to remember
22:53
Speaker 1: that for each great city, quite irrespective of its available spaces,
22:58
Speaker 1: a maximum of population is. Each great city is sustained
23:02
Speaker 1: finally by the trade and production of a certain proportion
23:05
Speaker 1: of the world's surface. By the area it commands commercially,
23:10
Speaker 1: the great city cannot grow except as a result of
23:12
Speaker 1: some quite morbid and transitory process, to be cured at
23:16
Speaker 1: last by feminine disorder beyond the limit the commercial capacity
23:19
Speaker 1: of that commanded area prescribes. Long before the population of
23:24
Speaker 1: this city, with its inner circle a third of the
23:26
Speaker 1: area of Belgium, rose towards the old fashioned city density.
23:30
Speaker 1: This restriction would come in even if we allowed for
23:34
Speaker 1: considerable increase in the production of foodstuffs in the future.
23:38
Speaker 1: It still remains inevitable that the increase of each city
23:40
Speaker 1: in the world must come at last upon arrest. Yet,
23:45
Speaker 1: though one may find reasons for anticipating that this city
23:48
Speaker 1: will in the end overtake and surpassed that one, and
23:51
Speaker 1: suchlike relative prophecying, it is difficult to find any data
23:56
Speaker 1: from which to infer the absolute numerical limits of these
23:59
Speaker 1: various fused cities, or perhaps it is more seemly to
24:03
Speaker 1: admit that no such data have occurred to the writer.
24:07
Speaker 1: So far as London, Saint Petersburg, and Berlin go, it
24:10
Speaker 1: seems fairly safety assume that they will go well over
24:13
Speaker 1: twenty millions, and that New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago will
24:17
Speaker 1: probably and Hankow almost certainly reach forty millions. Yet even
24:22
Speaker 1: forty millions over thirty one thousand square miles of territory is,
24:26
Speaker 1: in comparison with four millions over fifty square miles a
24:29
Speaker 1: highly diffused population. How far will that possible diffusion accomplish itself?
24:36
Speaker 1: Let us, first of all consider the case of those
24:39
Speaker 1: classes that will be free to exercise a choice in
24:42
Speaker 1: the matter, and we shall then be in a better
24:44
Speaker 1: position to consider those more numerous classes whose general circumstances
24:48
Speaker 1: are practically dictated to them. What will be the forces
24:52
Speaker 1: acting upon the prosperous household, the household with a working
24:55
Speaker 1: head and four hundred a year and upwards to live
24:58
Speaker 1: upon in the days to come? Will the resultant of
25:01
Speaker 1: these forces be as a rule centripetal or centrifugal. Will
25:07
Speaker 1: such householders in the Greater London of two thousand a
25:09
Speaker 1: d still cluster for the most part, as they do
25:12
Speaker 1: to day, in a group of suburbs as close to
25:14
Speaker 1: London as as compatible with a certain fashionable maximum of
25:18
Speaker 1: garden space and air. Or will they leave the ripened
25:21
Speaker 1: gardens and the no longer brilliant villas of Surbiton and Norwood,
25:25
Speaker 1: Tooting and Beckenham to other and less independent people. First
25:30
Speaker 1: let us wear the centrifugal attractions. The first of these
25:35
Speaker 1: is what is known as the passion for nature, that
25:37
Speaker 1: passion for hillside, wind and sea that is evident in
25:41
Speaker 1: so many people nowadays, either frankly expressed or disguising itself
25:45
Speaker 1: as a passion for gulfing, fishing, hunting, yachting or cycling.
25:49
Speaker 1: And secondly, there is the allied charm of cultivation and
25:53
Speaker 1: especially of gardening, a charm that is partly also the
25:56
Speaker 1: love of dominion, perhaps, and partly a personal love for
25:59
Speaker 1: them the beauty of trees and flowers and natural things.
26:03
Speaker 1: Through that we come to a third factor that craving strongest,
26:07
Speaker 1: perhaps in those low German peoples who are now ascended
26:10
Speaker 1: throughout the world for a little private imperium such as
26:14
Speaker 1: a house or cottage in its own grounds affords. And
26:18
Speaker 1: from that we pass on to the intense desire so
26:20
Speaker 1: many women feel, and just the women too, who will
26:23
Speaker 1: mother the future, their almost instinctive demand indeed, for a household,
26:29
Speaker 1: a separate, sacred and distinctive household built and ordered after
26:33
Speaker 1: their own hearts, such as in its fullness only the
26:36
Speaker 1: countryside permits. Add to these things the healthfulness of the
26:41
Speaker 1: country for young children, and the wholesome isolation that is
26:44
Speaker 1: possible from much that irritates, stimulates prematurely, and corrupts in
26:49
Speaker 1: crowded centers. And the chief positive centrifugal inducements are stated
26:55
Speaker 1: inducements that no progress of inventions at any rate can
26:59
Speaker 1: ever seriously the weaken. What now are the centripetal forces
27:04
Speaker 1: against which these inducements contend? End of chapter two. A
27:10
Speaker 1: recording by John Trevedick