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RECENT RATE OF MATERIAL PROGRESS IN ENGLAND 135
posits and depositors. These deposits are not. of
course, the deposits of working classes only. technic-
ally so called. They include the smaller class of trades-
men and the lower middle classes genetally. But,
quantum valeant, the facts as to a growth of deposits
and depositors should reflect the condition of the
country generally in much the same way as the returns
of pauperism. What we find then is, as regards de-
posits, that the increase between 1855 and 1865 was
'£34,300.000 to £45,300,000, or about one-third; be~
tween 1865 and 1875 from £45.300,000 to £67.600,000,
or about one-half; and between 1875 and 1885 from
£67,600.000 to £94,053.000, or just about 40 per cent.
-a less increase than in the previous ten years. but
not really less. perhaps, if allowance is made for the
fall of prices in the interval, and in any case a very
large increase. Then, as regards depositors, what we
find is an increase between 1855 and 1865 from
1,304,000 to 2,079,000, or 59 per cent. j between 1865
and 1875 from 2,079.000 to 3,256.000, or 56 per cent.;
and between 1875 and 1885 from 3,256,000 to over
5.000,000, or over 50 per cent. Whatever special ex-
planations there may· be, facts like these are at least
not inconsistent with a fuller employment of the popu-
lation in the last ten years than in the previous ten.
Yet another fact tending to the same conclusion
may be referred to. The stationariness or slow growth
of the income tax assessments in general in the last
ten years, as compared with the rapid increase in the
ten years just before, has already been referred to as
one of the signs indicating a check to the rate of
advance in our material growth. But when the returns
are examined in. detail, there is one class of assess-
ments, more significant, perhaps, than any, of the
general condition of the nation, viz., houses, which is
found to exhibit as great an increase in the last ten
years as in the previous decade. Between 1865 and
1875 the increase in the item of houses in the income
tax assessments in the United Kingdom was from