§ 1. _The Modern Industrial Town as a Machine-product._ § 2. _Growth of Town as compared with Rural Population in the Old and New Worlds._ § 3. _Limits imposed upon the Townward Movement by the Economic Conditions of World-industry._ § 4. _Effect of increasing Town-life upon Mortality._ § 5. _The impaired quality of Physical Life in Towns._ § 6. _The Intellectual Education of Town-life._ § 7. _The Moral Education of Town-life._ § 8. _Economic Forces making for Decentralisation._ § 9. _Desirability of Public Control of Transport Services to effect Decentralisation._ § 10. _Long Hours and Insecurity of Work as Obstacles to Reforms._ § 11. _The Principle of Internal Reform of Town-life._ § 1. In the last few chapters we have examined some of the influences of modern machine-production upon men and women in the capacity of producers, in relation to character, duration, intensity, regularity of employment, the remuneration of labour, and the economic relations which subsist between workers and employers. It remains to give special consideration to one factor in the environment of modern industrial life, which is of paramount importance upon the public, both in its working and living capacity. The biggest, and in some respects the most characteristic of machine-products is the modern industrial town. Steam-power is in a most literal sense the maker of the modern town. When the motive-power of industrial work was chiefly confined to the forces stored in man, the economy obtained by collecting larger numbers of men to work in close proximity to one another was comparatively small, and was commonly outweighed by the difficulty of securing for them a sufficient supply of food and other commodities, and by the greater immobility of labour at a time when fixed local associations were a strong binding force, and transport was slow and expensive. When the earlier machinery drew its motive-power chiefly from water, the local attachment and wide distribution of this power prevented the concentration of industry from advancing very far. Only in proportion as steam-power became the dominating agent did the economies of factory-production drive the workers to crowd ever more densely in the districts where coal and water for generating steam were most accessible, and to throng together for the most economical use of steam-power in industry.