Page 110 - clra62_0019-(GIPE)

RECENT RATE OF MATERIAL PROGRESS IN ENGLAND 103
would otherwise sell; there is Jess gross produce, and
in proportion there is even less net produce, that is, less
rent; consequently the net income appearing in the
Income Tax Schedules is either less than it was or does
not increase as it did before. The same with mines,
with railways, and with all sorts of business under
Schedule D. The things themselves may increase as
they did before, but as the money values do not increase
but diminish, the income tax assessments cannot swell
at t1ft! former rate. I t is the same with salaries and
other incomes not dependent so directly in appearance
on the fall in prices. Salaries and incomes are of course
related to a given range of prices of commodities, and
a fall in the prices of commodities implies that the range
of salaries and incomes is itself lower than it would
otherwise be, assuming the real relation between the
commodities and incomes to be the same after the fall
in prices as it would have been if there had been no
fall in prices. Hence the income tax assessments by
themselves are not a perfectly good test in a question
like the present. The change implied may be nominal
only, so far as the aggregate wealth and prosperity of
the community are concerned, though of ,course there
can be no great and general fall of prices without a
• considerable redistribution of wealth which must have
many important consequences.
This criticism, however, does not apply to the re-
maining figures in the short table submitted, and to
various other well-known facts, which we shall now
proceed to discuss.
The production of coal, then, is found to have pro-
gressed in the last thirty years as the income tax
assessments have done. The figures in millions of
tons at ten years' intervals are as follows:
Million Tons. I

1855. . . . . 64 .875. •. Million Toll$.
. 13 2
J865. • • • • 98 1885. •. . .59
And the rate of growth in the ten yearly periods which