Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/75

 Rh Under commercialism national wealth undoubtedly increases. In 1812 Colquhoun estimated the wealth of the United Kingdom at £2,736,000,000; in 1855 Edleston estimated it at £3,760,000,000; in 1865 Giffen estimated it at £6,113,000,000; in 1875 at £8,548,000,000; in 1885 at £10,037,000,000; to-day it is estimated at £13,500,000,000. Similarly the income of the United Kingdom was estimated in 1840 to be £504,000,000; in 1860, £760,000,000; in 1889, £1,285,000,000; in 1895, £1,421,000,000; in 1904, £1,700,000,000; to-day, £1,800,000,000. The wage-earners' share in 1850 was about £15 per head per annum, in 1888 it had risen to £25, in 1905 to £29, and it remains about that to-day. Thus, the wage-earners' share has not increased in proportion to the increase of the national income. I have already quoted Mr. Mallock's figures of family incomes, and these, read with the above figures and with the descriptions of poverty given in the investigations of Mr. Booth, Mr. Rowntree, the Social Union of Dundee, reveal a vast amount of poverty, a certain amount of which is punishment for personal errors, but the bulk of which is the product of our industrial system.

Let us consider the most fruitful source of all poverty—unemployment. The unemployed man is not merely temporarily injured by idleness. He loses grip on life, his savings go, his membership of thrift clubs lapses, he acquires bad habits, his skill deteriorates, he becomes an "habitual." Even if he resists