The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1894-09-22
Poverty Not Increasing.

IN u Contribution 10 tne NOTIH american
Rcricp, which deserves careful attention,
Mr.. w. II. MALLoCK considers an assump-
ton, which gives the main impulse to the
socialistic propaganda, and he show that
this is wholly without foundation. The
assumption is that under the conditions
OF contemporary civilization, which is
reared upon the principle of individ-
ual property and upon the application
of machinery to industry, poverty is
increasing at a distressing and formidable
rate. That the rich are growing richer and
the poor poorer was taken for granted by
KARL MARX, and the assertion is continual
ly repeated in socialistic speeches and writ
ings. Mr.. MALLOCK, however, undertakes
to prove that the reverse is the case in Eng
land, which MARX himself accepted as the
most perfect example of the working of the
latest type Of civilization. What, therefore,
is true of England must be true also Of other
countries where like conditions prevail.
1t is to Mr.. GIFFEN, the Statistical Secre-
tary to the Board Of Trade, that English
Socialists, when it suits their purpose, are
wont to appeal as to the greatest living au-
thority. But Mr.. GIFFEN, as the Rcrte1C
points out, has declared that so far as " the
individual income " is concerned, ait would
not be far short of the mark to say that the
whole of the great material improvement
of the past fifty years has gone to the
masses" The clear, cold light of statistics
reveals the fact that in England the average
fortunes of the rich are distinctly, IL not
greatly. decreasing; that persons possessed
of moderate means, say from $3.50 to
$4,000 a year, are increasing faster than
any other class; while the average
increase Of individual incomes has been
greatest among the wage-earning masses.
Not only do the masses receive on an av-
erage larger incomes, but these procure
them more comforts and luxuries; they in
habit better houses, wear better clothes,
consume per head an increasing quantity of
meat, butter, tea, sugar, and tobacco; and,
according to the last census, the persons
who minister exclusively to the amusement
Of the masses, have increased in ter years
by some 80 per cent. II the socialistic
assumption had any foundation, we might
expect it to prove true In this re-
spect, that, though the number of
moderate incomes is increasing, the
number of employers and small tradesmen
ia decreasing, small factories being merged
in larger ones, and many small shops in a
few gigantic emporiums. Even this seems
not to be the case. The number of small
manufacturing firms and retail shops in
London has during the last ten years kept
pace with The growth of population, while
the number. of textile factories, instead Of
lessening, as KARL MARX predicted, has in
creased from 6,SO7 in 1870 to 7,465 in 1885.
How has it happened that an assumption
really counter to the facts is so generally
put forward as a truism ? The currency of
the mistake is due to the tendency of those
persons whom Mr.. MALLOCK would describe
as economic impressionists, to confuse phe-
nomena essentially distinct; to confound, |
hat is to say, a mere change in the distribu-
ton of poverty with a growth of the evil;
and to overlook the fact hat even when
poverty in a given place exhibits an
increase, it may at the same
time have decreased in that place rel
atively to the population. II is, in truth,
no paradox that a town, a county, a
nation, may, as a whole, be growing
constantly more prosperous, and yet may
contain an increasing amount of squalor
and misery. The explanation is that,
wherever the modern industrial system has
been introduced, at whatever spot labor has
been massed together and put in operation
by capital handled with intellect n ability,
there has resulted not only an enorm in
crease in the production of wealth, but also
a great increase in the local population and
thus, though the gross product of wealth
per head of those employed and the share
thereof taken in the shape of wages or in
comes by each member of a great majority
of the population may be increasing year
by year, there may yet continue TO exist
a minority or residuum which fails to par
ticipate in the general progress, and which
may increase in absolute number, while
relatively TO the population it may be dimin-
ishing. To illustrate this point, Mr.. NAL
o takes the case of a village of Ave hun
dred inhabitants expanding into a manufac-
turing community Of fifty thousand. He
assumes that in the village n~ineteen-twen-
tieths Of the population were we'll to do and
only O~ne-twentieth were poor. The pro-
would give a pauper class of
After the village has grown
into a city Of fifty thousand, a
ensus Of its pauper class is taken,
this is found 10 number a thousand
persons. Those who look merely at the su-
fact of absolute increase will de-
nounce the modern industrial system for
having produced a thousand miserable hu-
nan beings where there were only twenty
i've before, while, in truth, the proportion
d the paupers to the prosperous was far
greater formerly than il Is now. In the vii
Age there Was one unkortunats BEING 10