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RECENT RATE OF MATERIAL PROGRESS IN ENGLAND 107
simple as they were. The reality of the former rate of
advance .is not so clearly manifest.
Of course I need hardly add that in the case of
another great textile, silk, there has been no progress,
but the reverse, for some years; that this is also true
ot linen i and that the increase' in the alIied manufac-
ture, jute, can only be a partial set-off.
In the textiles, then, as in other staple industries
of the country, the rate of advance in the last ten
yearJ, measuring by things, and not merely by values,
has been less than in the twenty years immediately
before.
We pass on, then, to another set of figures included
in the short table above submitted. We may look not
only at leading industries of production directly, but
at the broad figures of certain industries which are
usual1y held to reflect, as in a mirror, the progress of
the country generally. I refer to the railway traffics as
regards the home industries of the country, and the
entries and clearances of shipping in the foreign trade
as regards our foreign business.
As regards railways, what we find is, if we take the
receipts from the ~oods traffic in the form in which
they were summarized for the Royal Commission on
Trade Depression, viz., reduced to so much per head
of the population on the average of quinquennial
periods, that in the five years 1860-64, which is as far
back as the figures can be carried, the receipts per
head were liS.; ten years later, viz., in 1870-74, the
receipts per head were 18s.; and ten years later, viz.,
1880-84, the receipts per head were 2 IS. 2d. The rate
of growth shown in the first ten years' interval is 63
per cent. j in the second ten years' interval it is only
18 per cent. ; and in the last year or two, I may add,
there has been no further improvement Here the
question of the value of money comes in again, but
this would only modify partially the apparent change.
There is also a question as to railway extension having
been greater in the earlier than in the later period, so