ECONOMIC DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. 



69 



the manufacturing- and building industries, whereas in Ireland they have no 

 such basis of support, and sprang into existence, not from any need of their 

 services, but as the outcome of agriculture and industrial distress and chari- 

 table doles on an enormous scale. 



Domestic Service has risen with a steady progression from 9.4 per cent, in 

 1 84 1, to 18.0 per cent, in 188 1. It may perhaps be reasonable that the loss 

 of a large poor population should increase the proportion, to the whole, of 

 those classes who can afford to keep servants ; but this would not account 

 for the large positive increase in the total number of servants (85,000), nor 

 for the extraordinary fact that the proportion of servants to population in so 

 poor a country as Ireland is considerably higher than it is in England, and 

 as much as 3^ per cent, higher (comparing the per-centage) than it is in 

 Scotland. And it must be remembered that it was not so in 1841, when the 

 percentage for Ireland was much less than for England and Scotland. The 

 figures are as follows, taking the proportions first to be employed, and 

 second to the whole population : — 



What is the explanation of these remarkable figures? It would be sim- 

 plest to show that they are incorrect, but apart from some difference in the 

 method of tabulation (alluded to in the Census Report for 1881, but not 

 specified), I have found no loophole of escape, and the comparison of suc- 

 cessive decades shows how gradually the position of Ireland was reversed, 

 from being the most economical to being the most extravagant in Domestic 

 Service. The only explanation that suggests itself is that servants are 

 more numerous where poverty makes service cheap.* 



The slight increase in the per-centage under Property Owning would also 

 be unobjectionable, if any conclusion could be fairly drawn from the figures, 

 but, as we have already seen in the case of England, the returns under this 

 head are entirely delusive. 



Against these increases has to be set off a decrease in the Indefinite class, 

 which is returned as 122,000 in 1841, against 38,000 in 1881. 



* The total number of persons engaged in domestic service was reduced from about 426,000 

 in the Irish Census of 1881 to about 255,000 in that of 1891. This was due in great part to the 

 removal in 1891 from the heading of " Others engaged in service " of females, who were in the 

 Census of 1881 to the number of about 139,000, placed under that description. These women 

 were returned as "housekeepers," but were really wives or other near relatives of heads of 

 houses. In the Census of 1891, they were mostly included in Order 24 the " Indefinite and 

 Non-Productive Class." (Irish Census Report, 1891, Part II., p. 23). B. H. H. 



