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RECENT RATE OF MATERIAL PROGRESS IN ENGLAND 11-3
that it is an outrage on common sense to talk of there
being no check to the rate of growth in the country
when times are notoriously bad and everybody is talk-
ing of want of profit. What I should suggest finally,
by way of a hypothesis reconciling all the facts, would
be that probably there is some check to the rate of
material growth in the last ten years, though not of the
serious character implied by the first set of figures dis-
cussed; that this check may even be too small to be
measured by general statistics, though it is sufficient
to account for no small amount of malaz"se; and that
the malat'se itself is largely accounted for, as I have
suggested on a former occasion, by the mere fall of
prices. whatever the cause, as it involves a great re-
distribution of wealth and income, and makes very
many people feel poorer, including many who are not
really poorer, but only seem so, and many who are
really richer if they only allowed properly for the in-
creased purchasing power of their wealth. All these
facts are quite consistent with the fact of a very slight
real diminution in the rate of our material growth
generally, and with that change in the direction of the
national industry, significant of a general change be-
ginning throughout the world, which would seem to
have occurred.
To some'extent also it ought to be allowed that the
tendency in the very latest years seems unsatisfactory,
and that the developments of the next few years should
be carefully watched. Up to now there is nothing really
alarming in the statistics when they are anaJyzed and
compared. I t may be the case, though I do not think
it is the case, that causes are in operation to produce
tha.t great check and retrogression which have not as
yet occurred, though many have talked as if they had
occurred. The exact limits of the discussion should be
'arefully kept in mind.
lFortunately, however, there is no doubt what some
. the conclusions on practical points should be. If it
.! the case that the hold of an old country like England