6
Dazzled by the "Progress of the Nation," statistics dancing before his eyes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer exclaims in wild ecstacy: "From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased by six per cent.; in the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it has increased from the basis taken in 1853, 20 per cent., the fact is so astonishing as to be almost incredible. . . . . . . . .This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power." adds Mr. Gladstone, "is entirely confined to classes of property."
If you want to know under what conditions of broken health, tainted morals, and mental ruin, that "intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power entirely confined to classes of property" was, and is being produced by the classes of labour, look to the picture hung up in the last "Public Health Report" of the workshops of tailors, printers and dressmakers. Compare the "Report of the Children's Employment Commission" of 1863, where it is stated, for instance, that—"The potters as a class, both men and women, represent a much degenerated population, both physically and mentally," that the unhealthy child is an unhealthy parent in his tum," that a progressive determination of the race must go on and that "the degenerescence of the population of Staffordshire would be even greater were it not for the constant recruiting from the adjacent country, and the intermarriages with more healthy races." Glance at Mr. Tremenheere's Blue Book on the "Grievances complained of by the Journeymen Bakers." And who has not shuddered at the paradoxical statement made by the inspectors of factories, and illustrated by the Registrar General, that the Lancashire operatives, while put upon the distress pittance of food, were actually improving in health, because of their temporary exclusion by the cotton famine from the cotton factory, and that the mortality of the children was decreasing, because their mothers were now at last allowed to give them instead of Godfrey's cordial their own breasts.
Again reverse the medal. The Income and Property Tax Returns, laid before the House of Commons on July 20, 1864, teach us that the persons with yearly incomes, valued by the tax gatherer at £50,000 and upwards, had, from April 5th, 1862, to April 5th, 1863,
