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132 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
the rate of material growth would not appear to be so
very much less between 1875 and 1885 than in the period
just before, as it does in the above figures.
Another broad fact not easily reconcilable with the
fact of a great diminution in the real rate of material
growth in the last ten years is the steadiness of the in-
crease of population and the absence of any sign, such
as an increase in the proportion of pauperism, indicating
that the people are less fully employed than they were.
The increasing numbers.. must either be employed or
unemployed, and if there is an increase in the propor-
tion of the unemployed the fact should be revealed in
the returns of pauperism somehow. The existence of
trade unions, no doubt, prevents many workmen com-
ing on the rates who might formerly have done so, but
there are large masses of workmen, the most likely to
feel the brunt of want of employment, to whom this
explanati~n would not apply.
What we find, however, is that population has in-
creased as follows: between 1855 and 1865 from
27,800,000 to 29,900,000, or 7! per cent.j between
1865 and 1875 from 29.900,000 to 32,800,000, or nearly
10 per cent.; and between 1875 and 1885 from
32,800,000 to 36,300,000, or over 10 per cent. If it is
considered that the figures are not fairly comparable
for the early period, owing to the specially large emi-
gration from Ireland, which took away from the appar-
ent numbers of th-e United Kingdom as a whole, but
still allowed of as great an increase in the manufactur-
ing parts of the country as there has been later, then
we may take the figures for England only, and what
we find is-between 1855 and 1865 an increase from
18,800,000 to 21,100,000, or 12i per cent.; between
1865 and 1875 from 21,100,000 to 24,000,000, or
nearly 14 per cent.; and between 1875 and 1885 from
24,000,000 to 27,500,000, or 14i per cent. Whether,
therefore, we take the figures for the United King-
dom or for England only, what we find is a greater
increase of population in the last ten years than in