CHAP, xxvin TRUE INDIVIDUALISM 511 



In the period 1774 to 1800 which may be taken as 

 representing the latter half of the eighteenth century he 

 gives the wealth per head of the population of Great 

 Britain at 110, and for I860 to 1882, representing a 

 corresponding period of the nineteenth century, at 216. 

 But the purchasing power of money is estimated to have 

 been so much greater in the earlier period that 

 Mr. Mulhall calculates the effective income per head to 

 have then been 227, or actually higher than in our own 

 time. This apparent paradox can only be explained by 

 the proportion of the very poor to the whole population 

 being now exceptionally large, so that, although there has 

 been such an enormous increase of total wealth and a 

 considerable increase of very rich men, yet the great army 

 of workers who produce this wealth has increased so much 

 more largely that the proportion coming to them is 

 smaller than ever. And this is quite in accordance with 

 the evidence of Mr. Charles Booth, who has shown that 

 about 1,300,000 of the population of London live " below 

 the margin of poverty ; " and if we add to these the inmates 

 of the workhouses, hospitals, &c., we shall find that close 

 upon one-third of the whole population are in this miser- 

 able condition ; and we may be sure that in all our great 

 manufacturing towns and cities, the proportion of the 

 very poor is not much less. 



Again, we must remember that in the last century the 

 majority of the workers lived in the rural districts or in 

 the smaller towns, and possessed many additions to their 

 means of living which they have now lost : such as 

 gardens, common-rights, wood for fuel, gleaning after 

 harvest, pig and poultry-keeping, and often skim-milk or 

 butter milk from the farms where they worked. 



It thus appears that the conclusions arrived at by 

 myself from the statistics of poverty, suicide, insanity, 

 physical deterioration, and crime, during the last forty 

 years, 1 are supported by a quite different set of facts, 

 extending over a much longer period, and set forth by a 

 statistical authority of the first rank, who has no special 

 views to support. Let us therefore now consider the main 



1 See my Wonderful Century, Chapter XX. 



