Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/45

 An increase of tenfold in the number of depositors, and of fivefold and more in the amount of deposits! It seems obvious from these figures that the habit and means of saving have become widely diffused in these fifty years. The change is, of course, in part due to a mere change in the facilities offered for obtaining deposits; but allowing ample margin for the effect of increased facilities, we have still before us evidence of more saving among the masses.

There is yet one other set of statistics I should like to notice in this connection, those relating to the progress of industrial and provident co-operative societies in England and Wales. These I extract from the special appendix to the "Co-operative Wholesale Society's Annual Almanac and Diary" for the present year (pages 81 and 82). Unfortunately, the figures only go back to 1862, but the growth up to 1862 appears to have been very small. Now, however, most material advance is shown:

Such figures are still small compared with what we should like to see them, but they at least indicate progress among the working-classes, and not retrogression or standing still.

To conclude this part of the evidence, we find undoubtedly that in longer life, in increased consumption of the chief commodities they use, in better education, in greater freedom from crime and pauperism, and in increased savings, the masses of the people are better, immensely better, than they were fifty years ago. This is quite consistent with the fact, which we all lament, that there is a residuum still unimproved, but apparently a smaller residuum, both in proportion to the population and absolutely, than was the case fifty years ago; and with the fact that the improvement, measured even by a low ideal, is far too small. No one can contemplate the condition of the masses of the people without desiring something like a revolution for the better. Still, the fact of progress in the last fifty years—progress which is really enormous when a comparison is made with the former state of things—must be recognized. Discontent with the present must not make us forget that things have been so much worse. But the question is raised. Have the working-classes gained in proportion with others by the development of material wealth during the last fifty years? The question is not one which would naturally excite much interest among those who would answer the primary question as to whether the working-classes have gained or not, as I have done, in