THE PROGRESS OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 23 



nected with the special history of the society. That it happens for 

 the moment to be attracting a considerable amount of popular atten- 

 tion in connection with sensational politics and sociology, with agita- 

 tions for land nationalization and collectivism among pretended repre- 

 sentatives of the working-classes, is an additional reason for our not 

 neglecting this question ; but it is a question to which the society has a 

 primary claim, and which the authors of the agitations I have referred 

 to would have done well to study from the statistical point of view. 



There are two or three ways in which statistics may throw light 

 on such a question as I have put forward. The first and most direct 

 is to see what records there are of the money earnings of the masses 

 now and fifty years ago, ascertain whether they have increased or 

 diminished, and then compare them with the rise or fall in the prices 

 of the chief articles which the masses consume. Even such records 

 would not give a complete answer. It is conceivable, for instance, 

 that, while earning more money, and being able to spend it to more 

 advantage, the working-classes might be no better off than formerly. 

 There may be masses, as there are individuals, who do not know how 

 to spend. The question of means, however, will carry us some dis- 

 tance on the road to our object. We shall know that the masses must 

 be better off, unless they have deteriorated in the art of spending, a 

 subject of separate inquiry. 



In investigating such records, however, we have to recognize that 

 the ideal mode of answering the question is not yet possible. That 

 mode would be to draw up an account of the aggregate annual earn- 

 ings of the working-classes for a period about fifty years ago, and a 

 similar account of the aggregate annual earnings of the same classes 

 at the present time, and then compare the average per head and per 

 family at the different dates. Having thus ascertained the increase or 

 diminution in the amount per head at the different dates, it would be 

 comparatively easy, though not in itself quite so easy a matter as it 

 seems, to ascertain how much less or how much more the increased or 

 diminished sum would buy of the chief articles of the workman's con- 

 sumption. But no such account that I know of has been drawn up, 

 except for a date about fifteen or sixteen years ago, when Mr. Dudley 

 Baxter and Professor Leone Levi both drew up statements of enor- 

 mous value as to aggregate earnings, statements which it would now 

 be most desirable to compare with similar statements for the present 

 time, if we could have them, and which will be simply invaluable to 

 future generations. In the absence of such statements, all that can 

 be done is to compare what appear to be the average wages of large 

 groups of the working-classes. If it is found that the changes in the 

 money wages of such groups are in the same direction, or almost all in 

 the same direction, then there would be sufiicient reason for believing 

 that similar changes had occurred throughout the entire mass. It 



