Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/53

Rh what are called the capitalist classes, whether it is from capital proper or, as I maintain, a return only in the nature of wages, has only increased about 100 per cent, although capital itself has increased over 150 per cent. At the same time the capitalist classes themselves have greatly increased in number, so that the amount of capital possessed among them per head has only increased 15 per cent, notwithstanding the great increase in capital itself, and the average income per head can have hardly increased at all. On the other hand, as the masses of the nation, taking the United Kingdom altogether, have only increased about 30 per cent since 1843, when these income-tax figures begin, while their aggregate incomes have increased 160 per cent, it is explained how these incomes have gained, individually, about 100 per cent as against hardly any increase at all in the incomes of what are called the capitalist classes, on the average. Thus the rich have become more numerous, but not richer individually; the "poor" are, to some smaller extent, fewer; and those who remain "poor" are, individually, twice as well off on the average as they were fifty years ago. The "poor" have thus had almost all the benefit of the great material advance of the last fifty years.

We may now conclude this long inquiry. It has been shown directly, I believe, that, while the individual incomes of the working-classes have largely increased, the prices of the main articles of their consumption have rather declined; and the inference as to their being much better off, which would be drawn from these facts, is fully supported by statistics showing a decline in the rate of mortality, an increase of the consumption of articles in general use, an improvement in general education, a diminution of crime and pauperism, a vast increase of the number of depositors in savings-banks, and other evidences of general well-being. Finally, the increase of the return to capital has not been in any way in proportion, the yield on the same amount of capital being less than it was, and the capital itself being more diffused, while the remuneration of labor has enormously increased. The facts are what we should have expected from the conditions of production in recent years. Inventions having been multiplied, and production having been increasingly efficient, while capital has been accumulated rapidly, it is the wages-receivers who must have the benefit. The competition of capital keeps profits down to the lowest point, and workmen consequently get for themselves nearly the whole product of the aggregate industry of the country. It is interesting, nevertheless, to find that the facts correspond with what theory should lead us to anticipate.

The moral is a very obvious one. Whatever may be said as to the ideal perfection or imperfection of the present economic régime, the fact of so great an advance having been possible for the masses of the people in the last half-century is encouraging. It is something to