F.—ECONOMICS. 151 
of five important industries (coal, pig iron, shipbuilding, cotton, wool), 
measured either by production or by consumption of raw material, and 
of our export trade as a whole; the course of ‘ real wages’ and of * real 
income,’ 7.e. of money rates of wages and of money income per head, 
corrected to allow for changes in the purchasing power of money; the 
consumption of certain articles of food and drink; and housing. The 
influence of the growth of the population and the influence of fluctua- 
tions in prices have both been eliminated. The figures are presented 
in two ways; the upper half of the table gives actual figures of pro- 
duction, consumption or ‘ real income’ per head; the lower half gives 
the same figures as index numbers in which the figure for 1900 is 
taken=100 and forms the basis. Comparisons with this critical epoch 
are thus made easy. What does the table show ? 
It shows, first, for every separate index a marked and almost un- 
broken rise, epoch by epoch, to the last but one in 1900. There are 
occasional reactions (as with pig iron from 1880 to 1890 or cotton in the 
following decade), but these are only ripples on a powerful and rapid 
stream. From starting-points of about 50 or 60 the various indices 
moved in fifty years to 100; the general progress from 1890 to 1900 
was not less than in previous decades. Unquestionably up to 1900 
the average productivity and prosperity of each unit of the population 
rose as the number of units rose; there was a rapidly increasing return 
to labour as a whole. This was the complacent Victorian Age which 
led the world in material progress and piled up savings without effort. 
The table shows, next, from 1900 to 1910 a more interesting but 
more dubious picture. With one exception—real wages—every index 
has risen, but with two exceptions—coal production and exports—the 
rise is slower than in previous decades, and in more than one case 
is barely perceptible. Running our eyes along the last three lines of 
the table, we see pig iron going from 93 in 1890 to 100 in 1900 and 
only 101 in 1910; shipbuilding goes 82, 100, 105; wool 96, 100, 102; 
real wages 91, 100, 100; real income 87, 100, 102; consumption of food 
and drink 91, 100, 102; housing 95, 100, 104. In index after index 
a rapid rise to 1900 is followed by a smaller rise, or by no rise at all, 
to 1910. In cotton there had been reaction from 1890 to 1900; the 
resumed progress to. 1910 was at much below the former average rate. 
Only in coal production and exports is the rapid progress of Victorian 
days maintained or accelerated ; those two indices represent largely one 
factor, not two, for coal more than anything else swelled our recent 
exports.* In every other case, rapid certain growth to 1900 gives place 
° Curiously enough coal is the product for which a diminishing return to 
labour in this country, not since 1900 merely but long before, seems to be most 
definitely established. In relation to the number of persons actually employed 
in mining the output has fallen rapidly, from 324 tons per head per annum 
in 1881-85, to 288 tons in 1895-99 and 254 tons in 1909-13. If we combine these 
figures with those showing the relative movement in the wholesale prices of 
coal and of corn, we find that the amount of corn that could be bought by 
one person’s output of coal in a year rose 30 per cent. from 1881-85 to 1895-99, 
and was stationary from then to 1909-13; ‘as the hours of work had been 
reduced between the two latter epochs, the real cost in mining labour of a given 
quantity of corn had continued to fall slightly even in Britain. The increasing 
response of Nature to agricultural effort was just more than sufficient to out- 
weight the effects of her diminishing response to the British miner, 
