TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 825 



that it is all very well to pooli-pooli the non-increase or slower increase of the pro- 

 duction of staple articles and to assume that industry is becoming more and more 

 miscellaneous ; but other countries go on increasing their production of these same 

 staple articles. The increase of the manufactures of cotton, wool, coal, and iron in 

 Germany and the United States, they will say, has in recent years been greater in 

 proportion than in England, which is undoubtedly true. The explanation I have 

 to suggest, however, is that the competition with the leading manufacturing 

 country, which England still is, is naturally in the staple articles where manufac- 

 turing has been reduced to a system, the newer and more difficult manufactures 

 and the newer developments of industry generally falling as a rule to the older 

 country. Even in foreign countries, however, there are signs of slower growth of 

 recent years in the staple articles as compared with the period just before. Iii 

 Germany, for instance, the production of coal increased between 1860 and 1866 

 [I take the years which I find available in Dr. Neumann Spallart's ' Uebersichten '] 

 from 12,300,000 tons to 28,200,000, or nearly 129 per cent. ; between 1866 and 

 1876 the increase was from the figure stated to about 50,000,000 tons, or about 

 77 per cent, only ; between 1876 and 1885, another period of ten years, from the 

 figure stated to 74,000,000 tons, or less than 50 per cent. — a rapidly diminisliing 

 rate of increase. In the United States of America the corresponding figures for 

 coal are 15, 22, 50, and 103 million tons, showing a greater increase than in 

 Germany, but still a rather less rate of increase since 1876 than in the ten years 

 before. The experience as to the iron production would seem to be different, the 

 increase in the United States and Germany having been enormously rapid in the 

 last ten years; but I have not been able here to carry the figures far enough back 

 for comparison. Still the facts as to coal in Germany are enough to show how 

 rapidly the rate of increase of growth may fall oft' when a point is reached, and 

 that the experience of the United Kingdom is by no means exceptional. As the 

 staple articles develop abroad the rate of increase in such articles will diminish too, 

 and foreign industry in turn will become more and more miscellaneous. 



The conclusion would thus be that there is nothing unaccountable in the course 

 of industry in the United Kingdom in the last ten years. In certain staple indus- 

 tries the rate of increase has been less than it was in the ten years just before, but 

 there would seem to have been no increase or little increase in the want of emplo)'- 

 ment generalh', while there is reason to believe that certain miscellaneous industries 

 have grown at a greater rate than the staple industries or have grown into wholly 

 new being, and that there has also been some diversion of industry in directions 

 where the products are incorporeal. These facts also correspond with what is going 

 on abroad, a tendency to decline in the rate of increase of staple articles of pro- 

 duction being general, and industry everywhere following the law of becoming 

 more miscellaneous. Abroad also, we may be sure, as nations increase in wealth 

 the diversion of industry in directions where the products are incorporeal will also 

 take place. What the whole facts seem to bring oat, therefore, is a change in the 

 direction of industry of a most interesting kind. If we are to believe that the 

 progress of invention and of the application of invention to human wants continues 

 and increases, no other explanation seems possible of the apparent check to the 

 rate of material growth which seems to be so nearly demonstrated by some of the 

 statistics most commonly appealed to in such questions. 



At the same time I must apply the remark which I applied at the earlier stage 

 to the opposite conclusion that there had been a real check to the rate of increase 

 in our material growth. When the main statistics bearing on a particular point 

 all indicate the same conclusion, it is not difiicult to reason from them and to con- 

 vince all who study them ; but when the indications are apparently in conflict it 

 would be folly to dogmatise. I have indicated frankly my own opinion, but I, for 

 one, should like the subject to be more fully thrashed out. It is a very obvious 

 suggestion, moreover, that one may prove too much by such figures — that it is an 

 outrage on common sense to talk of there being no check to the rate of growth in 

 the country when times are notoriously bad and everybody is talking of want of 

 profit. What I should suggest finally, by way of a hypothesis reconciling all the 

 facts, would be that probably there is some check to the rate of material growth 



