466 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mittee of the various State "boards of charities to the National Conference 

 of Charities in 1887 was, that "except for the insane, who are every- 

 where constantly accumulating beyond their due ratio to the whole 

 population, there has never been for a period of five years any increase 

 in the proportion of paupers to the population ; while for longer pe- 

 riods there has generally been a decrease in the number of the poor as 

 compared with the whole population " ; and this, too, notwithstanding 

 the very great obstacles which stand in the way of all public and pri- 

 vate effort for the checking of pauperism in a country like the United 

 States, " which annually receives such armies of poor from European 

 countries, and at home permits intemperance to breed so much of pau- 

 perism, especially in cities." 



In England, where the population, between 1875 and 1885, in- 

 creased in a larger proportion than in any previous decade, there was no 

 increase, but a very steady decrease of pauperism ; or, from an annual 

 average number of 952,000, or 4*2 per cent of the whole population 

 in 1870-77, to 787,000, or 3 per cent of the population for 1880-'84. 

 For Scotland, the corresponding figures are much the same ; although 

 the Scotch administration of the poor is totally independent of that of 

 the English. In short, there is no evidence that pauperism is increas- 

 ing in England and Scotland with their recent marked increase in pop- 

 ulation, or that the people are less fully employed than formerly ; but 

 the evidence is all to the contrary. In Ireland, the experience has 

 been different. " Here, there has been an increase in pauperism, ac- 

 companied by a decline in population," the number of paupers in 

 receipt of relief, on the 1st of January, 1887, being returned as 

 113,241, as compared with 106,717 in 1883.* Comparing 1880 with 

 1850 the decline of pauperism in the United Kingdom was about 40 

 per cent. 



Prussia, with a marked increase in population, returned a decrease 

 in the number of paupers receiving relief from cities and towns from 

 3'87 per cent of the whole number in 1884, to 3*65 per cent in 1885. 



Crime in Great Britain is diminishing. The same is reported of 

 Italy. In the United States, while crime has diminished in a few 

 States, for the whole country it has, within recent years, greatly in- 

 creased. This is to be attributed, in the Northern States, mainly to 

 the great foreign immigration, and, in the Southern, to the emancipa- 

 tion of the negroes. 



Finally, an absolute demonstration that the progress of mankind, 

 in countries where the new economic conditions have been most influ- 

 ential in producing those disturbances and transitions in industry 

 and society which to many seem fraught with disaster, has been for 

 the better and not for the worse, is to be found in the marked pro- 

 longation of human life, or decline in the average death-rate, which 



* " The Material Progress of Great Britain '' ; address before the Economic Section 

 •of the Britidh Association, 1687, by Robert Giffcn. 



