Capital Volume I

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 

---