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J 42 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
The conclusion would thus be that there is nothing
unaccountable in the course of industry in the United
Kingdom in the last ten years. In certain staple in-
dustries the rate of increase has been less than it was
in the ten years just before, but there would seem to
have been no increase or little increase in the want of
employment generally, while there is reason to believe
that certain miscellaneous industries have grown at a
greater rate than the staple industries, or have grown
into wholly new being, and that there has also been
some diversion of industry in directions where the pro-
ducts are incorporeal. These facts also correspond with
what is going on abroad, a tendency to decline in the
rate of incr~ase of staple articles of production being
general, and industry everywhere following the Jaw of
becoming more miscellaneous. Abroad also, we may
be sure, as nations increase in wealth the diversion of
industry in directions where the products are incor-
poreal will also take place. What the whole facts seem
to bring out, therefore, is a change in the direction of
industry of a most interesting kind. If we are to believe
that the progress of invention and of the application of
invention to human wants continues and increases, no
other explanation seems possible of the apparent check
to the rate of material growth which seems to be so
nearly demonstrated by some of the statistics most
commonly appealed to in such questions .
. At the same time I must apply the remark which I
applied at the earlier stage to the opposite conclusion,
that there had been a real check to the rate of increase
in our material growth. When the main statistics
bearing on a particular point all indicate the same
conclusion, it is not difficult to reason from them and
to convince all who study them; but wheh the indica-
tions are apparently in mutual conflict it would be folly
to dogmatize. I have indicated frankly my own opinion J
but I, for one, should like the subject to be more ful'in-
thrashed out. I t is a very obvious suggestion, m {des.
over, that one may prove too much by such fig,," .