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RECENT RATE OF MATERIAL PROGRESS IN ENGLAND 137
tion, it will be found, has a good deaJ to support it in the
actual facts as to industryand population in recent years.
The foreign trade shows some sign of the change that
is going on. Looking through the list of export articles,
some remarkable developments are to be noticed. The
annexed short table (see p. 138) speaks for itself.
Thus there are not a few articles, of which jute is
a conspicuous example, in which there has been an
entirely new industry established within a compara-
tively short period; and though the percentage of in-
crease may not in all be so great in the last ten years
as in the previous 'ten just because the industry is so
wholly new, yet the amount of the increase is as
great or greater. In other articles, such as soap and
British spirits, there is a new start in the last ten years
after a decline in the previous periods. Such cases as
oil and floor cloth, paper other than hangings, and
plate glass are also specially noticeable as practically
new trades. The list I am satisfied could be consider-
ably extended, but I am giving it mainly by way of
iUustration. Finally, there is the item of other articles
not separately specified-an item which is always
changing in the statistical abstract because every few
years one or more articles grow into sufficient import-
ance to require separate mention, so that any extended
comparison of this item for a long series of years is
impossible. Still it is ever growing, and what we find
in the last ten years is that, in spite of the fall of prices,
the growth is from £9,700,000 to £10,600,000, or
nearly 10 per cent Many of the articles referred to.
it is plain, cannot run into much money, but the in-
dications of a tendency are none the less clear. What
is happening in the foreign trade is happening, we may
be sure. in the home trade as well, of which in another
way the increase in the imports of foreign manufactures,
already referred to in another connection. is really a
sign. as it implies the growth of miscellaneous wants
among the consumers.
The census figures as to occupations tend, I believe,