468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



duced the mortality contingent upon tbe same in the larger hospitals ; 

 or, taking the experience of Germany as the basis of comparison, from 

 41-6 in 1868, to 435 per cent in 1880. 



Dealers in ready-made clothing in the United States assert that 

 they have been obliged to adopt a larger scale of sizes, in width as 

 well as in length, to meet the demands of the average American man, 

 than were required ten years ago ; and that in the case of clothing 

 manufactured for the special supply of the whole population of the 

 southern sections of the country, this increase in size since the war, 

 attributable almost entirely to the increased physical activity of the 

 average individual, has been fully one inch around the chest and waist. 

 Varieties of coarse clothing, as the brogan shoe and cotton drills, 

 which before the war were sold in immense quantities in this same 

 section of the country, have now almost passed out of demand, and 

 been superseded by better and more expensive products. The Amer- 

 ican is, therefore, apparently gaining in size and weight, which could 

 not have happened had there been anything like retrogression, or 

 progress toward poverty on the part of the masses. 



But the contribution of greatest value that could be made to the 

 discussion of this subject, would be to spread before us an exhibit 

 of the exact results of the experience of a country and a people, where 

 under average, or not too favorable conditions, the recent changes in 

 industrial and social life, consequent upon the new methods of produc- 

 tion and distribution, have operated most influentially. Such an exact 

 exhibit can not be made ; but the experience of Great Britain, where 

 economic data have been gathered and recorded during the last fifty 

 years with an exactness and completeness not approached in any other 

 country, furnishes a most gratifying and instructive approximation. 

 To the record of this experience, attention is next requested. 



During the last twenty-five or thirty years, the aggregate wealth 

 of Great Britain, as also that of the United States and France, has in- 

 creased in an extraordinary degree. In Great Britain the increase 

 from 1843 to 1885 in the amount of property assessable to the income- 

 tax is believed to have been 140 per cent, and from 1855 to 1885 

 about 100 per cent. The estimate of the total income of the country 

 for 1886 was £1,270,000,000 ; and of its aggregate wealth, about 

 £9,000,000,000, or 845,000,000,000. Have now the working-classes 

 of Great Britain gained in proportion with others in this enormous 

 development of material wealth ? Thanks to the labors of such men 

 as the late Dudley Baxter, Leon Levi, David Chadwick, and Robert 

 Giffen, this question can be answered (comparatively speaking for the 

 first time) with undoubted accuracy. 



Fifty years ago, one third of the working masses of the L^nited 

 Kingdom were agricultural laborers ; at present less than one eighth 

 of the whole number are so employed. Fifty years ago the artisans 

 represented about one third of the whole population ; to-day they 



