[178] In the years 1831-41 there was an enormous increase of the factory population. Between 1835 and 1839, according to Porter, the increase amounted to 68,263, or a rise of 19.2 per cent. (_Progress of the Nation_, p. 78.)
[179] T. Ellison, _Cotton Trade of Great Britain_, p. 74.
[180] Only 349,452, or 56.8 per cent. in factories. (Porter, p. 78.)
[181] This increase since 1881 is chiefly explained by the feverish expansion and over-production of the cotton industry. The census return for 1891 is reduced to correspond with the earlier estimates in Booth's _Occupations of the People_.
[182] The 1851 census gives 235,447, that of 1891 gives 240,000 (with an estimated deduction for clog and patten-makers).
[183] The enormous fall between the census of 1861 and 1871 is partly attributable to changes in classification. (1) Female relatives of farmers, included in 1861, were excluded in later censuses; (2) certain changes were made in the treatment of "retired" persons.
[184] The "steam-navvy" is, however, making digging a machine industry. Thirteen men with a machine-navvy can do the work of between 60 and 70 human navvies.
[185] The aggregate effect of the change upon employment of seamen is traced by the following figures, in which the tonnage of sailing and steam vessels is massed together:--
Tonnage. Men. 1850 3,564,833 151,430 1860 4,658,687 171,592 1870 5,690,789 195,962 1880 6,574,513 192,972 1890 7,945,071 213,374
[186] M.S. Levasseur, _La Population Française_. Paris, 1889.
[187] From 1876 the transport services, which in 1886 amounted to 2.8 per cent. of the income-receiving population, were included under commercial. Taking this into consideration, a comparison of the industrial and the commercial population of 1866 and 1886 shows that while the former falls from 28.8 to 25.2, the latter rises from 4.0 to 8.7.
[188] J.S. Nicholson, _Effects of Machinery on Wages_, p. 33.
[189] Babbage, _Economy of Manufactures_, p. 230.
[190] Cf. Thorold Rogers, _Political Economy_ (1869), pp. 78, 79.
[191] Marshall, _Principles of Economics_, p. 607; cf. Cunningham, _Uses and Abuses of Money_, p. 59. See, however, _infra_ Chap. ix.
[192] _Effects of Machinery on Wages_, p. 66.
[193] An increase in the space-area of a market may, however, in some cases make a trade more steady, especially in the case of an article of luxury subject to local fluctuations of fashion, etc. A narrow silk market for England meant fluctuating employment and low skill. An open market gave improved skill and stability, for though silk is still the most unsteady of the textile industries, it is far less fluctuating than was the case in the eighteenth century. (Cf. Porter, p. 225.)