annexations, and the population of the annexations. In the twenty years the population of Boston gained, including all, 197,921, or 79+ per cent; the old city proper gained but 22,549, or 16+ per cent; while the population of the annexations increased 175,402, or 156+ per cent, in the twenty years.
These facts certainly remove all apprehension as to the increase of the slum population of the cities named, and I submit that it is perfectly reasonable that the population of such districts can not increase; and that, while there is a great setting of people toward our cities, they are found as a rule among the suburban population, in healthy sanitary districts; and that whatever influx there is to the slum localities is entirely offset by the outgoing people from such districts.
After collecting the material for this chapter, my attention was called to an exceedingly valuable article in the October Contemporary Review, by Mr. Sidney J. Low, entitled The Rise of the Suburbs. Mr. Low, taking his figures from the recent census of England, that of last spring, makes a table of some of the typical districts of inner London, on both sides of the river, with their rates of increase or decrease since 1881, which is as follows:
| District | Rate of Increase or decrease per cent. | |
| City of London | 25·5 | decrease. |
| Westminster | 19·9 | |
| Strand | 18·2 | |
| St. Giles | 12·1 | |
| St. George, Hanover Square | 10·4 | |
| Holborn | 6·8 | |
| St. George-in-the-East | 3·4 | |
| Shoreditch | 2·0 | |
| Bethnal Green | 1·7 | increase. |
| Mile End | 1·8 | |
| St. Olave, Southwark | 1·4 | |
| Kensington | 4·9 | |
| Whitechapel | 4·3 | |
In regard to these districts, Mr. Low remarks that some of them are wealthy residental districts, while many of them are poor and others altogether poverty-stricken. "Bethnal Green. Whitechapel, St. Olave, Southwark, and parts of St. Pancras, St. Giles, and Holborn," he says, "are tinted with a very dark brush on Mr. Charles Booth's excellent comparative maps of London poverty." And he further says: "It is not unsatisfactory to find that the dwellers in these localities are obeying the great law of centrifugal attraction, and quitting the inner recesses of the metropolis to find homes in the outskirts. The people who leave Hatton Garden, and Commercial Street, and Hoxton, and Seven Dials, either forced out by 'improvements' or voluntarily retiring, do not go to the country—that we know well enough; nor do the country folks
