y creating channels through
which some of our population shall be attracted back to the fields; so
that there shall be a stream of population pouring from the city into
the country, till a healthy balance is restored, and we have solved the
twin problems of rural depopulation and of the overcrowded, overgrown
city.

This brings me to the second branch of Prof. Geddes' paper, the
historical. The Professor reminds us how vestiges of one civilisation
lie super-imposed upon another, like geological strata, and asks.
"Understanding the present as the development of the past, are we not
preparing also to understand the future as the development of the
present?" Following this line of thought, I venture to suggest that
while the age in which we live is the age of the great,
closely-compacted, overcrowded city, there are already signs, for those
who can read them, of a coming change so great and so momentous that the
twentieth century will be known as the period of the great exodus, the
return to the land, the period when by a great and conscious effort a
new fabric of civilisation shall be reared by those who knew how to
apply the knowledge gained by "Social Survey to Social Service." What
are the signs? What words can we place under the head of "Incipient" in
Prof. Geddes' diagram? I would suggest, for one of Prof. Geddes'
interrogation marks might be substituted "Decentralisation of
Industry"--as a great, but yet incipient movement, represented by Port
Sunlight, Bournville, Garden City. For there are now many agencies at
work making for industrial decentralisation. Industries are being driven
out of the great towns by the excessive rents and rates which have to be
paid there--by the difficulty of obtaining adequate space for the modern
factory, a one-storey building; and for the homes of our workers, which
must be vastly different to what they now are if England is to maintain
her place among the nations. And while factories are being driven from
the city, they are also being attracted to the country by its
newly-discovered potentialities. Thus Messrs. Lever Brothers, crowded
out of Warrington, established an entirely new town on a new site at
Port Sunlight; and, because the site was new and raw, it was therefore
possible for Mr. Lever to plan his little town with a single eye to the
best and most desirable conditions, alike from an industrial and a
health and housing point of view. And the same is true of Bournville.
Bourn