Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/18

8 Canada, Holland, France, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, in the order named, Mr. Mulhall also computes that the average man in the United States works 113 days to gain his food for a year, as compared with 114 days' work in England; in England he works 34 days for his clothing, here he works 49; house-rent and taxes take 29 and 33 days in England, 30 and 33 days in the United States; and the Englishman consequently has 91 days in the 300 left for other purposes, including savings, whereas the American has but 75. The banking capital and deposits of England are $125 per inhabitant; of Australia, $150; of the United States, $50. The railroads of the United States carried 270,000,000 passengers in 1882, those of England carried 752,000,000; and the slight difference in railway rates is by no means an explanation of the difference. The school attendance in England has increased from forty per cent less per capita than ours in 1880 to about the same. The post-office returns show a greater increase in the use of the mails in England than here. And that faithful index of popular condition, the criminal calendar, shows a steady decrease for a long period, until, in 1885, there was but one conviction to 3,272 persons in England; while America has one conviction to 930 persons, which has been about the rate for a considerable time. And the statistics of pauperism, while not so favorable for England, show a steady and rapid decrease for fifty years, and the ratio of paupers to population is about one fourth what it was in 1840. It would be interesting, had we space, to show the greater consumption per capita of many articles in England than in America, as of woolen clothing, sugar, and rice, the total consumption of food products being about the same per capita; and to show the vast increase seen in England during the past forty years. Suffice it to say that the facts indicate a greater average of welfare in England than in this country. "There are few questions of fact upon which the general public are more misled by our public men than this," says Mr. Gunton, in his "Wealth and Progress"; "but the facts all point to the same result, viz., that the increase in wealth, in proportion to population, has been greater in England than in this country." Lastly, but most important of all to lovers of liberalism, legal equality, and popular government, England has, during the past twenty years, grown democratic "by leaps and bounds," and her vast wealth is certainly known to have been reaching a state of more equal distribution, while we have been erecting an aristocracy of wealth. The explanation of all this reduced to its simplest form is not difficult. England's citizens buy in enormous quantities and in the cheapest markets, and sell in enormous quantities in the dearest markets. The Englishman buys at $10, puts $1 worth of labor on the material, and sells at $15. We buy at $15, put $1 worth of