Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/52

44 the fruits of their labor being increasingly appropriated to capital. On the contrary, the income from capital has at least no more than kept pace with the increase of capital itself, while the increase of capital per head, as we have seen, is very little; so that it may be doubted whether the income of the individual capitalist from capital has on the average increased at all. If the return to capital had doubled, as the wages of the working-classes appear to have doubled, the aggregate income of the capitalist classes returned to the income-tax would now be £800,000,000 instead of £400,000,000. In other words, it would not be far short of the mark to say that almost the whole of the great material improvement of the last fifty years has gone to the masses. The share of capital is a very small one. And what has not gone to the workman, so called, has gone to remunerate people who are really workmen also, the persons whose incomes are returned under Schedule D as from "trades and professions." The capitalist as such gets a low interest for his money, and the aggregate return to capital is not a third part of the aggregate income of the country, which may be put at not less than £1,200,000,000, and is, I should estimate, not much more than a fourth part.

It will be interesting, I think, to present these conclusions in the form of an account. We have not, as I have already said, an exact statement of aggregate earnings, either at the beginning or at the end of the period; but assuming the aggregate income of the people as about £1,200,000,000 now, and that the wages of working-men are per head twice what they were, the aggregates in 1843 and at the present time would compare as follow:

From this it appears that the increase of what is known as working-class income in the aggregate is greater than that of any other class, being 100 per cent, while the return to capital and the return to