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XVI.

'tHE RECENT RATE OF MATERIAL PROGRESS IN
1
ENGLAND.
Ncoming before you on this occasion it has occurred
I to me that a suitable topic in the commercial capital
of England, and at a time when there are many reasons
for looking around us and taking stock of what is going
on in the industrial world, will be whether there has
been in recent years a change in the rate of material
progress in the country as compared with the period
just before. Some such question is constantly being put
by individuals with re~ard to their own business. It is
often put in political dIscussions as regards the country
generally, with some vague idea among politicians that
prosperity and adversity, good harvests and bad, in the
most general sense, depend on politics. And it must
always be of perennial interest. Of late years it has
become specially interesting, and it still is so, because
many contend that not only are we not progressing,
but that we are absolutely going back in the world,
while there are evident signs that it is not so easy to
read in the usual statistics the evidence of undoubted
growth as it was just before 1870-73. The general idea,
in my mind, I have to add. is not quite new. I gave a
hint of it in Staffordshire last winter, and privately I
have done something to propagate it so as to lead.
people to think on what is really a most important sub-
ject. What I propose now to do is to discuss the topic

I Address as President of Section F at British Association meeting,
Manchester, 1887.
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