366 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. CHAP. xx. 



This is for the whole of Great Britain and Ireland, 

 and it corresponds with that recent increase of wealth in 

 the City of London which was taken by the writer in the 

 City Press to be a gratifying proof of " commercial 

 prosperity." 



Here, then, we have direct confirmation of that " in- 

 crease of want with increase of wealth " which, when 

 propounded as a fundamental fact of modern social sys- 

 tems in Henry George's " Progress and Poverty," was 

 fiercely denied as utterly unfounded and the very oppo- 

 site of the truth. The association of the two phenomena 

 is clearly proved by the facts and figures here given ; and 

 that association is shown to be not a mere coincidence 

 by the fact that not only the increase, but changes in the 

 rate of increase, are strictly associated ; and, yet further, 

 that four separate indications of deterioration which are 

 partially or wholly, due to poverty, to dread of poverty, 

 or to rapid fluctuations of wealth, also show similar 

 changes in their rate of increase. 



We have seen that, in Huxley's opinion, all the ter- 

 rible social evils which have been briefly summarized in 

 this chapter are due to the existing organization of so- 

 ciety, and that our present social order " makes for 

 evil " ; the late Professor Cairnes was of the same opin- 

 ion; Frederick Harrison, in 1886, declared that the con- 

 dition of the actual producers of wealth was then such as 

 to be the condemnation of modern society, 1 yet it has 

 since then been getting worse, and all our great thinkers 

 prophets or poets have condemned it. Carlyle 

 thundered against its iniquities, but with no clear indi- 

 cations of a remedy; Ruskin saw more clearly that a 

 1 See Report of the Industrial Remuneration Conference, p. 429. 



