XII THE DEPRESSION OF TRADE 213 



the towns ; and that means a diminished production of 

 wealth for the country, and a great increase of pauperism 

 and misery in the towns where these people go. 



Evidence of the Increase of Destitution. 



It is very difficult to get direct evidence of this, but 

 there is one piece of indirect evidence — though it may be 

 almost called direct — which I adduced some years ago, 

 but can never find answered or explained in any way 

 consistent with that increase of prosperity of the masses 

 which is so persistently alleged. In the reports of the 

 Registrar-General for London — and he takes in an 

 enormous area called Greater London — he gives the deaths 

 in workhouses and hospitals each year. In order to arrive 

 pretty fairly at what may be called the destitute who die 

 in these institutions, I have taken the deaths in the 

 workhouses and one-half of the deaths in the hospitals. 

 In 1872 they amounted to 8,674, or 12-2 per cent, of the 

 total deaths ; in 1881 to 13"132, or 16"2 per cent, of the 

 deaths. Now I want to know, if the masses of the people 

 of London and its suburbs were better off, or even as well 

 off, in 1881 as in 1872,^ why did 30 per cent, more of 

 them die in destitution ? If we take the proportion of 

 deaths to those living, we find this increase of 4,458 

 deaths of the destitute in these ten years means the 

 addition of 107,000 to the destitute poor of London ! 

 Now all this, which shows a real and dreadful increase of 

 poverty, necessarily means depression of trade. If there 

 are 100,000 more destitute persons in London now than 

 there were ten years ago, there are so many less customers 

 for the staple products of the country. Then, again, if 

 we turn to another country — the sister country Ireland — 

 we find that still more remarkable and still more dis- 

 tressing events have occurred. There the population has 

 decreased half a million since 1870, and during the same 

 period the emigrants have amounted to 883,000, so that 



^ The year 1872 is taken because 1871 was the year of the great 

 epidemic of smallpox, when the number who died in workhouses and 

 hospitals was abnormally large. 



