to keep them clear of those diseases arising from insufficient nourishment which, according to the medical testimony already recorded they at present rarely escape.*

Here at any rate we have before us on official testimony the condition of the agricultural producers in our England of to-day. It is deplorable enough. What is worse, if they produced twice as much by the application of more capital and machinery, and our total agricultural annual return were £600,000,000 instead of £300,000,000, the labourers under the pressure of unrestricted competition would get no higher pay, in proportion to the cost of food and lodging, than they do now. Moreover, as urged above, if the rents of the landowners were taken by the State to-morrow, and used for the reduction of all other taxation in the way that Mr Henry George and others propose, this by itself would benefit the labourers not at all if the farmers still maintained, as they would maintain, their ascendancy. The direct expropriation of landlords and the allotment of a few acres of land under the State to each agricultural labourer might by degrees have a better effect; but the present generation of labourers are too ignorant and too poor to maintain their ground, even on a very small scale, under the existing system of production for profit.

The first point that has to be established is the right of every man to a sufficiency of food to keep him in health in return for the ordinary day's labour. The next that such

Mr Henry George has shown quite conclusively as against Mr Francis A. Walker that Marx's theory of the steady increase of the amount of capital required in all industries and the tendency to larger and larger operations applies to agriculture in the United States. The average size of the farms is growing census by census. Needless to add that in market-gardening the same rule applies, though where this industry is ranked as farming the contrary might seem to be the case. A market-garden of 50 acres might employ more capital than a farm of 500.

labour shall be organised to the best advantage in conjunction with that of his fellows in country and in town. Good housing is also essential, and the powers of the Local Governments might fairly be made compulsory in this direction. A reduction of the hours of labour necessarily accompanies these reforms. But the basis of every improvement must be good food and good education in childhood. In short, the land question as it affects the agricultural labourers cannot be separated from the great and complicated problem of the reorganisation of the present system of production and exchange in the interest of the producing class. If improvement is to be peaceful, the reorganisation cannot begin too soon. The very idea of even a wages-minimum is looked upon as ridiculous by those who guide our present development. They think like Mr Fawcett that they have quite settled the question when they have restated the old hack fallacies over again as solemn truths. But the facts must be faced. Men of the upper and middle classes who are not utterly devoid of all sympathy must make common cause with the workers in demanding that the power of the State shall no longer be used to maintain a system of land ownership and land cultivation which means, and cannot but mean, the permanent degradation of the producers. Here as in the great fields of manufacture and exchange, the first points to be considered are not how to secure rents for the landowner, compensation for the farmer, increased profit for the capitalist and justification for the discredited middle class economists and statesmen; but how to obtain and render permanent, health, happiness, sound living, light work and general education, physical and mental, for those who now struggle through existence in such misery as the official reporters themselves scarcely describe in full.

CHAPTER X.

THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE CITY PRODUCING CLASS.

IN order to appreciate the general conditions of production, and the manner in which the amount of wealth created is divided among the population, a few more figures are necessary, and these alone will show that, making what allowance we please for the power of society to modify the surroundings of the next generation, and thus to produce a healthier, better educated, and more moral nation in the future, the present distribution of wealth is so faulty as to render certain a general overturn, peaceful or bloody, ere many years have passed. The historical development of the struggle of classes has, in short, reached the point where, out of the rottenness of existing society, new and more wholesome growths will arise.

Plain figures alone are enough to give some idea of the truth. Thus, the general income of the country is now reckoned, by the most competent authorities, at £1,300,000,000 in round figures, or close upon that sum, though, of course, it is very difficult to fix any exact amount. Out of this total the landlords, the capitalists, the professional classes, and the profit-mongers absorb nearly £1,000,000,000, leaving for the producing class little more than 300,000,000.* Of course, in the £1,000,000,000,

* In 1867, the late Mr Dudley Baxter estimated the total paid in such wages at £254,729,000. The workers pay back about a fifth of this in rent.

are included the returns which many of the lower shopkeeping class obtain as the reward of labour in distribution, which is as exhausting as the labour of a large proportion of the wage-earners in production. But this class of small traders is dependent upon the proletariat when "times" are good, and is crushed down practically into the proletariat when "times" are bad. The domestic servants, who. derive their support from the indolent rich, are also paid out of the sum named, this useless body increasing steadily with the progress of civilisation. On the other hand, much of the production itself is, as will be seen clearly below, utterly wasteful or harmful, and the producers who are engaged upon such work are themselves forced to fritter away their labour on goods which are called for by the luxurious classes, quite irrespective of their real inherent utility or beauty; or perhaps their labour is devoted to making intoxicating drinks to be largely and harmfully consumed by their own class. Still the proportions remain. Out of £1,300,000,000 of total income little more than £300,000,000 are paid to the productive wage-earners, who actually produce and distribute the wealth-about one-fourth of the whole.

But the entire national wealth of the community, though very small in comparison with what it ought to be, or even with the total income of the country as given above, is distributed even more faultily. According to Mr Mulhall's estimates, 222,500 families own £5,728,000,000 out of a total realised national wealth of nearly £8,000,000,000, or close upon £26,000 per family, with, of course, a corresponding income out of the £1,000,000,000 taken yearly by nonproducing families; whilst 4,629,000 families possess but £398,000,000, or less than £90 per family. Doubtless

Y

this fearful discrepancy is shaded over in actual life, seeing that 2,046,900 families own together £7,562,000,000, or about £3700 per family, showing that between the 4,629,000 families who own but £90 a family, on the average, and the 222,500 families who own £26,000 each family, there are some 1,800,000 families who own on the average about £1000 each family, with a corresponding share in the national income. Nevertheless, the contrast between the enormous wealth of the few and the poverty of the many is nowhere so great as in England, and the many are no longer so ignorant of the fact or its causes as in the days before the establishment of School Boards. Nor, in considering this portion of the subject, should the figures before given be neglected, that the total assessed to incometax in 1882 above the limit of £150 a-year-and the returns are notoriously far below the mark-is close upon £600,000,000, or £100,000,000 more than the entire gross annual produce of the country forty years ago, and five times the value of the entire gross annual produce of the country when Arthur Young wrote a hundred years ago, which he estimated at £122,000,000.* During the last forty years the wages of the actual producers, however, are estimated to have increased but £30,000,000 or £40,000,000. The national wealth has increased in an enormously higher ratio-fully four times faster-than the population; but the people have not got their share of the increase even. This without regard to the fact that under our wasteful capitalist system we sweep down yearly into the sea at least £30,000,000 worth a-year of the most admirable manure in sewage, manure which, if properly applied, would

* I am aware, of course, that the effect of the gold discoveries modify these estimates; but not so much as might be supposed.