CHAPTER X. THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE CITY PRODUCING CLASS. In order to appreciate the general conditions of production, and the manner in which the amount of wealth created is divided among the population, a few more figures are necessary, and these alone will show that, making what allowance we please for the power of society to modify the surroundings of the next generation, and thus to produce a healthier, better educated, and more moral nation in the future, the present distribution of wealth is so faulty as to render certain a general overturn, peaceful or bloody, ere many years have passed. The historical development of the struggle of classes has, in short, reached the point where, out of the rottenness of existing society, new and more wholesome growths will arise. Plain figures alone are enough to give some idea of the truth. Thus, the general income of the country is now reckoned, by the most competent authorities, at £1,300,000,000 in round figures, or close upon that sum, though, of course, it is very difficult to fix any exact amount. Out of this total the landlords, the capitalists, the professional classes, and the profit-mongers absorb nearly £1,000,000,000, leaving for the producing class little more than 300,000,000.* Of course, in the £1,000,000,000, * In 1867, the late Mr Dudley Baxter estimated the total paid in such wages at £254,729,000. The workers pay back about a fifth of this in rent. are included the returns which many of the lower shopkeeping class obtain as the reward of labour in distribution, which is as exhausting as the labour of a large proportion of the wage-earners in production. But this class of small traders is dependent upon the proletariat when “times” are good, and is crushed down practically into the proletariat when 66 times" are bad. The domestic servants, who derive their support from the indolent rich, are also paid out of the sum named, this useless body increasing steadily with the progress of civilisation. On the other hand, much of the production itself is, as will be seen clearly below, utterly wasteful or harmful, and the producers who are engaged upon such work are themselves forced to fritter away their labour on goods which are called for by the luxurious classes, quite irrespective of their real inherent utility or beauty; or perhaps their labour is devoted to making intoxicating drinks to be largely and harmfully consumed by their own class. Still the proportions remain. Out of £1,300,000,000 of total income little more than £300,000,000 are paid to the productive wage-earners, who actually produce and distribute the wealth-about one-fourth of the whole. But the entire national wealth of the community, though very small in comparison with what it ought to be, or even with the total income of the country as given above, is distributed even more faultily. According to Mr Mulhall's estimates, 222,500 families own £5,728,000,000 out of a total realised national wealth of nearly £8,000,000,000, or close upon £26,000 per family, with, of course, a corresponding income out of the £1,000,000,000 taken yearly by nonproducing families; whilst 4,629,000 families possess but £398,000,000, or less than £90 per family. Doubtless Y this fearful discrepancy is shaded over in actual life, seeing that 2,046,900 families own together £7,562,000,000, or about £3700 per family, showing that between the 4,629,000 families who own but £90 a family, on the average, and the 222,500 families who own £26,000 each family, there are some 1,800,000 families who own on the average about £1000 each family, with a corresponding share in the national income. Nevertheless, the contrast between the enormous wealth of the few and the poverty of the many is nowhere so great as in England, and the many are no longer so ignorant of the fact or its causes as in the days before the establishment of School Boards. Nor, in considering this portion of the subject, should the figures before given be neglected, that the total assessed to incometax in 1882 above the limit of £150 a-year-and the returns are notoriously far below the mark-is close upon £600,000,000, or £100,000,000 more than the entire gross annual produce of the country forty years ago, and five times the value of the entire gross annual produce of the country when Arthur Young wrote a hundred years ago, which he estimated at £122,000,000.* During the last forty years the wages of the actual producers, however, are estimated to have increased but £30,000,000 or £40,000,000. The national wealth has increased in an enormously higher ratio-fully four times faster-than the population; but the people have not got their share of the increase even. This without regard to the fact that under our wasteful capitalist system we sweep down yearly into the sea at least £30,000,000 worth a-year of the most admirable manure in sewage, manure which, if properly applied, would * I am aware, of course, that the effect of the gold discoveries modify these estimates; but not so much as might be supposed. enhance the fertility of our fields almost beyond calculation, and afford far more food than any probable increase of a well-fed population could overtake. Again, we have to consider the number of paupers and vagrants. Greater severity in enforcing the workhouse test at present keeps people from accepting relief until they are actually half dead from starvation, and leads outside charity to act more readily. Even so, too, it is calculated that 4,500,000 out of our entire population of 30,000,000 in Great Britain receive poor-relief or charity in one shape or another in the course of the year; that is to say, one-seventh of our people are constantly driven to seek help from others in order to keep body and soul together, under that admirable society, which to assail, necessarily argues, as some say, ignorance, insanity, or unscrupulousness. For it has been proved over and over again that pauperism, in the form of need for relief, may come upon the most sober and industrious of our population in times of crisis or depression, or in consequence of the introduction of the most successful machine. There are some, of course, who, in the face of such facts and figures as have been brought forward already, contend that the main cause of all this fearful agglomeration of poverty in the face of ever-growing wealth, is the unfortunate inclination of English men and women to intoxicating drink. Beyond question, drink has an effect in making matters worse than they would otherwise be. The excessive consumption of wine, beer, spirits-especially the spiritsis injurious to the people. Mr William Hoyle of Bury, who is an enthusiast on this question, insists that the country loses £250,000,000 annually by its expenditure on intoxicating liquors, when account is taken of those who grow the grain to make them, those who manufacture, and those who distribute them. Granting that much is wasted in this way-saying that all Mr Hoyle's contentions are juststill there remains the fact, too often proved, that misery, bad air, over-crowding, unwholesome and insufficient food as often drive to drink, as drink drives its votaries to pauperism and misery. The Mere abstinence from all intoxicating liquors on the part of a people who have used beer in one shape or another as their national beverage for upwards of a thousand years would not necessarily change the social conditions. sober Englishman might be more ready to combine for social and political objects than his beer or spirit drinking fellows, but hitherto the most temperate portion of the working community have scarcely been the most ready to strive for the interests of their class; while if the whole working class reduced its standard of life by giving up beer without substituting an equally strong determination to have something else in its place, wages might be reduced by the force of competition even below their present level. It may be well also to deal here with those who urge that the increased consumption of tea, sugar, and tobacco per head is conclusive as to the improvement, even the relative improvement, in the position of the working class. Sugar of course is food, and its reduction in price is advantageous to increased consumption; but the petty luxuries of tea, coffee, tobacco, &c. are ill purchased indeed at the loss of milk, butter, eggs, &c., which, owing to their enhanced price, the workers have been compelled to a large extent to forego since the last century. The drawback in fact to all these averages is that such averages necessarily leave out of account the greatly increased consumption of all these articles by the well-to-do classes and their hangers-on-a |