During many years, as each decennial census has appeared, timid sociologists may well have felt misgivings whether England could continue to support her ever multiplying millions. The fears of science have not been verified by the facts of experience; thus exactly a quarter of a century since the census return of 1871 seemed to leave no escape from the conclusion, that population had already all but overtaken the means of subsistence, or that unless our numbers were at once arrested, it must in a very short time do so. Since 1871 we have added 7 millions to our population, the equivalent, that is, of 1,200,000 families and the same number of working men. Instead of the pressure on subsistence being greater, or the average condition of our people being worse, the exact opposite has occurred. In comparison with the state of things two decades since, the masses among us are to-day better housed, better clothed, better shod, better fed, better educated. There is, as in an earlier chapter was shown, a steady decrease of pauperism; the number of those who with their dependents of all kinds live on the result of their investments, is growing constantly. Whether it be due to the reduction in the cost of conveyance, to the opening up of fresh fields of supply, or to the appreciation of gold, the fall in prices of the chief articles of consumption, corn, sugar, tea, cotton, timber, is a visible and a great benefit to the country.
The fact that the increase between 1881 and 1891 fell short by about a quarter of a million of that which signalized the preceding ten years has been demonstrated by statistical experts of scientific authority not to indicate pressure on means of subsistence, but to be explicable by the stationariness of the population in many rural districts as well perhaps as by the disinclination, reflected from French and American precedent, of Englishwomen indefinitely to fulfil the functions of maternity.
During the period now spoken of, with the exception of mining, the great staple industries of the United Kingdom have none of them increased, while agriculture has decreased. It may, therefore, well seem problematical how the 1,200,000 fresh heads of families have found a livelihood for themselves and their belongings.