"Paying the Harvesters" (detail) by Leon Lhermitte (18844-1925), 1882.
Orsay Museum.
"The census of 1856 tells us that in fifty-four departments, by moving outside of department to department, there was in France during the five year period from 1851 to 1856, a decline in population of 370,000 people, which, campaigns have brought in the cities, including 305,000 in the department of Seine.
This census also tells us that in that same period, the effect of the displacements that have occurred in the departments themselves, joined the movement outside the cities of ten thousand inhabitants and over increased by 900,838 individuals, ie that the proportion of urban population to the detriment of the rural population rose 43% from 1850 to 1856 on the previous period; enormous increase that has never seen at any time, nor in our country, nor in any other country during such a short space of time.
Finally, the census of 1856 found a well marked slowdown in growth the general population of France, so that this increase was five times less strong in the period from 1851 to 1856, in the period from 1841 to 1846.
A quick word on the first downturn of the population in France. It probably comes, in part, during the period from 1851 to 1856, from accidental causes, particularly the high cost of food, that is to say the famine with which, according to a law highlighted by the statistical science , one sees always occur in parallel fewer births and more deaths. But the slowdown comes as a general cause that reveals Also statistics, namely: the reduction of the family, by reducing the number of children.
There are seventy years that we had in France, on average, 4.19 births per marriage, and now we do matters more than 3.19. Marital fertility in less than a century, has fallen by a quarter, a significant slowdown in the expansion of the population [...] We know [...] that, among the Romans, the weakening of the population, incessant preoccupation with their legislators, began to emerge soon as the patres familias preferred the theater and the circus Rome, stay in the campaign, which excited so strongly the complaints of Varro and Columella. And certainly, at the time of splendor in which these two authors wrote, it was far from thinking that one day Rome would fall, especially because the depopulation would leave the empire without defense against invading barbarians.
In antiquity as today, the weakening of the population came from the major centers, the need for luxury has already decreased the number of marriages and fertility in the wealthy classes, and the scarcity depopulated classes poor in abnormal proportions, as now, the invasion of cities from the countryside became a disturbing cause, which also profoundly altered the conditions of steady development of the population.
emigration campaigns that occurred in France during the period from 1851 to 1856, is a serious disorder in the economy and in the general conditions of society, a condition whose consequences could be fatal if it notifies them to bring a speedy remedy.
Without doubt, France is endowed with great energy of fertility, but yet we must not let it look too long to trends that could lead to weakening agricultural production by the weakening of the rural population. There are, for nations as for individuals, general laws dominate, and hence inevitably spell prosperity or ruin. It was often said agriculture is the strength of a state, the force behind the country, which gives robust soldiers for its defense. "Agriculture, said Louis Napoleon became a historical work, published in 1842, is the first element of the prosperity of a country because it is based on immutable interests, and it forms the healthy population, strong, moral campaigns (*)."
Thus, statistical science finds in the affluent neighborhoods of the capital, regular household does not provide enough children to replace the father and mother. For its part, medical science, as a result of observations made from 1825 to 1856 in one of the most populous in the 7th arrondissement, attests that "if the population of Paris was left to its own indigenous resources propagation, it would decrease rapidly and eventually die out within a relatively short space of time. " These are the words of Dr. Duparcque, in a work read by him to the Company's medical department of the Seine, at the meeting of October 5, 1856
These results are certainly not unique to the city of Paris, they are absolutely the same in all major cities, only with this difference, they appear rational proportion to the mass of the agglomerated population. "Everywhere in Europe," continues Mr. Passy, in the work we have already quoted, marriages are usually less fertile in major cities than in smaller and less in them than in the countryside. " [...] Since Mr. Passy was speaking, the decrease in the number of children per marriage in the compared with rural cities, has become much more noticeable now that it no longer counts as 3 by marriage, 19 births on average.
campaigns alone are therefore the great reservoir of the population, the population on which rests the future of a particular nation. [...] I must say, our institutions: the constitution of the family, our education system, etc.., Tend to retain some families in the countryside and it is perhaps more than you think, one of the causes that make since the end of last century, we drive constantly revolutions revolutions.
When the family is not strongly represented by the paternal power by inheritance laws, with some opportunities for conservation inherited property given in a wise measure, solidarity heritage disappearing, everyone tends to disperse. While individualism takes hold of the society to bring their appetites and desires, and leave these agitations which have their incessant food in major population centers, we can compress more or less long, but smoldering always in the depths of society.
Without doubt, we must protect the cities, because they are the focus of the lights and it should protect the industry, this wonderful work of physical and moral forces of man applied to production, we must protect it much, because it is, in modern states, one major elements of prosperity and power public. But do not go so far as protection become a primer that distracts people from agriculture. [...]
Nowadays, what favors are not lavished on the industry? Is it not for her and for itself, what created the railways if heavily subsidized by the state? that the ports have improved, large rivers channeled and maintained with public funds? [...]
Besides all that invites people to leave their rural homes, it is important to place as this can hold them. Otherwise, if the influx does not stop, could we not fear that one day society will suddenly found himself surprised and shaken up by the unknown out of improvident combinations.
That also favors are not granted to cities? At all these institutions public education and charitable grants shows, the pleasures of all kinds; to them millions for their beautification; luxury expenditure, spending wonderful, but after all the most unproductive expenditure, and part of which fell to the safety campaigns and the alleviation of their miseries, would be so fruitful for the earth and men.
By giving cities an abnormal development, you create people like that seem perpetually suspended over an abyss, because they are based only on capital much more fictional than real, constantly subjected to the whims luxury, opportunity and all the setbacks industrial or political difference to rural populations, which probably can be painfully affected by the inclemency of the seasons, but finally, for which the soil forms a capital, invariably and always refreshing that never leaves.
cities are just too attractive to the population we must divert the inhabitants of the countryside, rather than to invite, by disappointing attractions, an existence that often alters the conditions of moral life and physique.La proportion of marriages is lower, the lowest proportion of births and the ratio of illegitimate children to legitimate children in larger cities than in rural areas, and in Paris than in other cities.
In the cities, under the action of a léthifère misery, mortality is much higher and the average life, the criterion of civilization, although less than in the countryside. In Paris, a third of the population died in hospitals. The number of crimes and misdemeanors in urban populations occurs in a proportion that rises to almost double the crimes and offenses committed by rural populations, and finally sixteen crazy, campaigns do not have one and one suicide thirty.
is why it is important so hard to retain people in rural areas, through institutions that attach to the ground by an education system that prompts the work of farm life, instead of preventing, by d some useful incentives, by honors within agriculture, through combinations, without halting the development of new families based and rising through labor, which would stop the movement that families today, as we has so aptly said, is liquidating all twenty-five or thirty years as a business.
must not lose sight that there is a necessary link between the duration of family and duration of states that seem to find their most solid foundation and common in the countryside. If big cities are home to active civilization, they are also home to the revolutions that do turn around civilization and empires fall.
The desertion of the countryside, the excessive increase of cities immoderate luxury, corruption of morals, the weakening of paternal authority, provoked endless obstacles to the development of freedom, all these things, which imperceptibly and gradually walk together, prepared and brought the fall of Rome.
The example must not be lost. "
Valentin-Smith," Note on the danger of growing cities by the depopulation of the countryside and the need to devise means to prevent the migration of rural people (read the Academy of Sciences, Literature and Arts of Lyon, in the meeting of January 19, 1858), " Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences, Literature and Arts of Lyon., vol. 6, 1858
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(*) Analysis of the sugar question . Paris, 1842,
