[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.