Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/270

Rh 258 ENGLAND [NATIONAL WEALTH. Growth of the uatiuual income. Amount of accu mulated weal tli. Growth of National Income. The income tax returns given in the preceding tables furnish important materials for ascertaining, if only approximately, the national income of England. They show, first of all, that it is not only grow ing, but growing at an enormous rate. This is conclusively proved by the returns of the aggregate annual value of the incomes assessed under schedule D, comprising the gains derived from trades and professions, including in the same the profits from such undertakings as mines, railways, canals, and gas and water works. It is said, with truth, that these incomes under schedule D are &quot; tli3 true gauge of the prosperity of the nation;&quot; and if this be admitted, the people of England are growing vastly in prosperity. In the fifteen years from 1861 to 1875, ths increase in the annual value of the incomes of England and Wales taxed under schedule D was no less than .147,865,566, being at the rate of. 9,857,704 per annum. In Scotland, during the same period, the increase of incomes under schedule D was at the rate of 1,209,298 per annum, and in Ireland at the rate of 353,135; while in the whole of the United Kingdom it was at the rate of 11,480,138 per annum. Accumulated Wealth. There have been many attempts made to estimate the amount of capital, or of accumulated wealth, of the country in recent times, and the rate at which it is increasing. One of the most recent, as well as most valuable of these estimates, was contained in an elaborate paper by Mr Robert Giffeu, head of the statistical department of the Board of Trade, read before the Statisti cal Society of London on the 15th of January 1878. Tak ing the income tax returns, down to the year ended March 31, 1875, the latest for which particulars were published, for the basis of his calculations, Mr Giffeu arrived at the conclusion that &quot; the total capital of the people of the United Kingdom may be reckoned at a minimum of 8500 millions sterling,&quot; this being &quot; the capitalized value of the income derived from capita 1, or, in other words, the accumulated wealth of the nation. &quot;It is a bewildering figure,&quot; says Mr Giifcn, &quot;about eleven times the amount of our national debt, which may thus be reck oned with all soberness as a fleabite. Nearly 7500 millions out of this amount besides must be reckoned as income-yielding, only the remaining 1000 millions being set down as the value of mov able property or the direct property of imperial or local authorities, which does not yield any individual revenue. The suggestion may perhaps be made that to some extent these are only figures in an account that the capital outlay on the soil, plant, machinery, factories, and houses of England, or ou the circulating capital of English industry, would not come to so much. But in reply I would say that, while there is no evidence one way or the other as to what the outlay has been, while we shall never know what it has cost from generation to generation, to give us all this inheritance, there is some justification for thinking that the values are stable and not transitory. They represent an estate on which thirty-four millions of people have facilities for production and distribution, which must be equal all in all to the facilities existing anywhere else, because they are constantly tried in the furnace of free trade, and are not sustained by any adventitious means. If certain pro perties have acquired what is called a monopoly value, it is because actual workers are able to pay the corresponding rent out of their first earnings, and have ample wages and profit besides. In such matters the property of a great country, like a factory or business, must be valued as that of a going concern, and the monopoly value which certain things acquire only enters into the question of the distribution of the estate and its income.&quot; Growth A S regards the growth of capital in the course of the first of capital three quarters of the present century, Mr Giffen s culcnla- ui the tions showed that it had been going on at an ever-increasing rate ^ ie S reatest increase taking place in the decennial period from 18G5 to 1875. The following table was pub lished by him as an approximate account of the capital and property existing in the United Kingdom, distinguished as assessed and not assessed to income tax, in each of the years 1865 and 1875, given in millions of pounds, with the amount and percentage of increase in the ten years : centurv Capitol and Property. 1865. Increase in 1875. | 1875. Amount. Per Cunt. ASSESSED TO INCOME-TAX. Lands Millions. 1864 1031 620 211 19 7 414 18 37 2 55 659 Millions. 2007 1420 668 519 56 29 655 20 53 4 84 1128 Millions. 143 389 48 308 37 22 241 2 16 2 29 469 8 38 8 146 195 314 58 11 43 100 53 71 Houses. Farmers profits Public funds, less home funds Mines Ironworks Railways. Canals .. .. .... Gasworks Quarries Other profits .. . Other income-tax, principally } trades, professions, and com- &amp;gt; panics. ) Total 4938 75 200 100 500 300 6643 105 300 400 700 400 1706 30 100 300 200 100 35 40 50 300 40 33 NOT ASSESSED TO INCOME-TAX. Trades and professions omitted ... Income from capital of non- income-tax-paying classes .... Foreign investments not in Schedules C and D Movable property not yielding income. . Government and local property .. Grand Total 6113 8548 2436 40 In the concluding part of his paper, Mr Giffen entered upon the Distril difficult task of estimating the distribution of the increase of wealth tion ol both in the three divisions of the United Kingdom and among the in- classes, premising that &quot; it would be difficult to find sufficient crease details, owing to the large amounts of income which are earned in wealth one part of the country and pay income tax in another. &quot; The great increase,&quot; he goes on to say, &quot; both in amount and per head of population is undoubtedly in England, although the income tax returns show clearly enough that both Ireland and Scotland now progress very rapidly. In another aspect, viz., as to whether capital is being more diffused, or is accumulating in fewer hands, I am afraid the data are not sufficiently good for any sure conclusions. There are certain means for comparing the number of assessments under Schedule D, at different amounts of income, which would appear to show that the number of large incomes is increasing more quickly than the increase of population or the in crease of wealth. But the fact of the rich class becoming a little more numerous, would not prove that, as a whole, the number of people possessed of moderate capital, and the average amount they possessed, are increasing or diminishing, while the increasing number of company assessments under Schedule D makes the number ot assessments altogether useless for comparison, as we have no infor mation whatever respecting the number of individual shareholders in the different companies, the average amount of each individual interest, and the interests of the holders in Schedules A, B, and C.&quot; As icgards the important question whether the accumulation of inline: capital in recent years, subsequently to 1875, marked by great O f de- depression of almost all branches of trade and industry, Mr Giffen s pressie conclusions were that the process of growth continued unin- O f trat terruptedly. He expressed his conviction &quot;that in no year is the U p 0n : accumulation absolutely at an end, and that in many direc- capita tions it is even more active in dull years than it is at other times. We know, for instance, that the capital outlay on railways is incessant ; that during the last two or three years of depression, and even now, the nation is saving in railways very nearly as much as the annual income of the capital invested in them. In agriculture again, there is a constant annual reclamation of land in progress, besides an incessant outlay on the older cultivated area. The truth is that, owing to the division of labour, there must be a vast disorganization of industry, not a mere tem porary falling oft from a former inflation, before accumulation can be wholly checked. A certain portion of the community is told off, as it were, to create the accumulations, and if the accumulations were not made, we should see in the building trades, in railway construction, in shipbuilding, and numerous other directions, a wide-spread stoppage of works, and masses of unemployed labourers, far exceeding anything witnessed even in those terrible times of depression which were frequent before the free trade period, when industry was partially disorganized, and pauperism assumed most threatening dimensions. In the absence of the effects which would follow, we must assume that the cause is not present, that