454
Chapter 25
Gasworks
126.02%
11.45%
Railways
83.29%
7.57%
If we compare the years from 1853 to 1864 in three sets of four consecutive years each, the rate
of augmentation of the income increases constantly.
32
It is, e.g., for that arising from profits
between 1853 to 1857, 1.73% yearly; 1857-1861, 2.74%, and for 1861-64, 9.30% yearly. The
sum of the incomes of the United Kingdom that come under the income tax was in 1856,
£307,068,898; in 1859, £328,127,416; in 1862, £351,745,241; in 1863, £359,142,897; in 1864,
£362,462,279; in 1865, £385,530,020.
33
The accumulation of capital was attended at the same time by its concentration and centralisation.
Although no official statistics of agriculture existed for England (they did for Ireland), they were
voluntarily given in 10 counties. These statistics gave the result that from 1851 to 1861 the
number of farms of less than 100 acres had fallen from 31,583 to 26,597, so that 5,016 had been
thrown together into larger farms.
34
From 1815 to 1825 no personal estate of more than
£1,000,000 came under the succession duty; from 1825 to 1855, however, 8 did; and 4 from 1856
to June, 1859, i.e., in 4½ years.
35
The centralisation will, however, be best seen from a short
analysis of the Income Tax Schedule D (profits, exclusive of farms, &c.), in the years 1864 and
1865. I note beforehand that incomes from this source pay income tax on everything over £60.
These incomes liable to taxation in England, Wales and Scotland, amounted in 1864 to
£95,844,222, in 1865 to £105,435,579.
36
The number of persons taxed were in 1864, 308,416, out
of a population of 23,891,009; in 1865, 332,431 out of a population of 24,127,003. The following
table shows the distribution of these incomes in the two years:
Year ending
April 5th, 1864.
Year ending
April 5th, 1865.
Income from
Profits
Income from
People
Income from
Profits
Income from
People
Total Income
£95,844,222
308,416
105,435,738
332,431
of these
57,028,289
23,334
64,554,297
24,265
of these
36,415,225
3,619
42,535,576
4,021
of these
22,809,781
832
27,555,313
973
of these
8,744,762
91
11,077,238
107
In 1855 there were produced in the United Kingdom 61,453,079 tons of coal, of value
£16,113,167; in 1864, 92,787,873 tons, of value £23,197,968; in 1855, 3,218,154 tons of pig-iron,
of value £8,045,385; 1864, 4,767,951 tons, of value £11,919,877. In 1854 the length of the
railroads worked in the United Kingdom was 8,054 miles, with a paid-up capital of £286,068,794;
in 1864 the length was 12,789 miles, with capital paid up of £425,719,613. In 1854 the total sum
of the exports and imports of the United Kingdom was £268,210,145; in 1865, £489,923,285. The
following table shows the movement of the exports:
1846 £58,842,377
1849 63,596,052
1856 115,826,948
1860 135,842,817
1865 165,862,402
1866
3
188,917,563
455
Chapter 25
7
After these few examples one understands the cry of triumph of the Registrar-General of the
British people:
“Rapidly as the population has increased, it has not kept pace with the progress of
industry and wealth.”
38
Let us turn now to the direct agents of this industry, or the producers of this wealth, to the
working class.
“It is one of the most melancholy features in the social state of this country,” says
Gladstone, “that while there was a decrease in the consuming powers of the
people, and while there was an increase in the privations and distress of the
labouring class and operatives, there was at the same time a constant accumulation
of wealth in the upper classes, and a constant increase of capital.”
39
Thus spake this unctuous minister in the House of Commons of February 13th, 1843. On April
16th, 1863, 20 years later, in the speech in which he introduced his Budget:
“From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent....
In the 8 years from 1853 to 1861 it had increased from the basis taken in 1853 by
20 per cent.! The fact is so astonishing as to be almost incredible ... this
intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power ... entirely confined to classes of
property ... must be of indirect benefit to the labouring population, because it
cheapens the commodities of general consumption. While the rich have been
growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor. At any rate, whether the
extremes of poverty are less, I do not presume to say.”
40
How lame an anti-climax! If the working class has remained “poor,” only “less poor” in
proportion as it produces for the wealthy class “an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and
power,” then it has remained relatively just as poor. If the extremes of poverty have not lessened,
they have increased, because the extremes of wealth have. As to the cheapening of the means of
subsistence, the official statistics, e.g., the accounts of the London Orphan Asylum, show an
increase in price of 20% for the average of the three years 1860-1862, compared with 1851-1853.
In the following three years, 1863-1865, there was a progressive rise in the price of meat, butter,
milk, sugar, salt, coals, and a number of other necessary means of subsistence.
41
Gladstone’s
next Budget speech of April 7th, 1864, is a Pindaric dithyrambus on the advance of surplus-
value-making and the happiness of the people “tempered by poverty.” He speaks of masses “on
the border” of pauperism, of branches of trade in which “wages have not increased,” and finally
sums up the happiness of the working class in the words:
“human life is but, in nine cases out of ten, a struggle for existence.”
42
Professor Fawcett, not bound like Gladstone by official considerations, declares
roundly:
“I do not, of course, deny that money wages have been augmented by this increase
of capital (in the last ten years), but this apparent advantage is to a great extent
lost, because many of the necessaries of life are becoming dearer” (he believes
because of the fall in value of the precious metals)..."the rich grow rapidly richer,
whilst there is no perceptible advance in the comfort enjoyed by the industrial
classes.... They (the labourers) become almost the slaves of the tradesman, to
whom they owe money.”
43
In the chapters on the “working day” and “machinery,” the reader has seen under what
circumstances the British working class created an “intoxicating augmentation of wealth and