Great question! 1888 was way after the famines, so the food supply was relatively steady and there was no outright death and hunger in the UK and Ireland's coun

Great question! 1888 was way after the famines, so the food supply was relatively steady and there was no outright death and hunger in the UK and Ireland's countryside. So, why? The only thing I can think of is that with this steady food supply and improvements in agriculture, the population of England, for example, almost doubled in the second half of the 19th century. So even if the city dwellers (whether born poor in the city or transplanted from Ireland) wanted to go back and get a safer (but not necessarily easier) job at a farm, their services may have simply not been required there, since all cultivated land was already taken care of by the existing workforce (again, improvements in agriculture and rural population growth, too). So even if they went on this "job hunting" trip into the countryside, which itself was pretty monumental since they probably had to beg to survive along the way (they didn't have Linkedin or what have you back then to look for jobs), it probably would have resulted in nothing, so they had to settle for a low-qualified city job.