[7] The number of females over fifteen years of age is about twelve millions. Those who work for wages number less than five millions.
[8] Mr. Giffen’s latest estimates show that not more than twenty-three per cent of the wage-earners in this country earn less than twenty shillings a week; whilst seventy-seven per cent earn this sum and upwards. Thirty-five per cent earn from twenty shillings to twenty-five shillings; and forty-one per cent earn more than twenty-five shillings. See evidence given by Mr. Giffen before the Labour Commission, 7th December 1892.
[9] The reader must observe that I speak of the rent of the land, not of the land itself, as the subject of the above calculation. I forbear to touch the question of any mere change in the occupancy or administration of the land, or even of any scheme of nationalising the land by purchasing it at its market price from the owners; for by none of these would the present owners be robbed pecuniarily, nor would the nation pecuniarily gain, except in so far as new conditions of tenure made agriculture more productive. All such schemes are subjects of legitimate controversy, or, in other words, are party questions; and I therefore abstain from touching them. I deal in the text with facts about which there can be no controversy.
[10] It is also every year becoming more unimportant, in diametrical contradiction of the theories of Mr. H. George. This was pointed out some twelve years ago by Professor Leone Levi, who showed that whereas in 1814 the incomes of the landlord and farmer were fifty-six per cent of the total assessed to income-tax, in 1851 they were thirty-seven per cent, and in 1880 only twenty-four per cent. They are now only sixteen per cent.
[11] See Local Government Board valuation of 1878.
[12] Recent falls in rent make it impossible to give the figures with actual precision; but the returns in the New Doomsday Book, taken together with subsequent official information, enable us to arrive at the substantial facts of the case. In 1878 the rental of the owners of more than a thousand acres was twenty-nine million pounds. The rental of the rural owners of smaller estates was thirty-two million pounds; and the rental of small urban and suburban owners was thirty-six million pounds. The suburban properties averaged three and a half acres, the average rent being thirteen pounds per acre.
[13] According to the Local Government Report of 1878, the rental of all the properties over five hundred acres averaged thirty-six shillings an acre; that of properties between fifty and a hundred acres, forty-eight shillings an acre; and that of properties between ten and fifty acres, a hundred and sixteen shillings an acre. In Scotland, the rental of properties over five hundred acres averaged nine shillings an acre: that of properties between ten and fifty acres, four hundred and thirteen shillings. With regard to the value of properties under ten acres, the following Scotch statistics are interesting. Four-fifths of the ground rental of Edinburgh is taken by owners of less than one acre, the rental of such owners being on an average ninety-nine pounds. Three-fourths of the ground rental of Glasgow is taken by owners of similar plots of ground; only there the rental of such owners is a hundred and seventy-one pounds. In the municipal borough of Kilmarnock, land owned in plots of less than an acre lets per acre at thirty-two pounds. The land of the few men who own larger plots lets for not more than twenty pounds. Each one of the eleven thousand men who own collectively four-fifths of Edinburgh, has in point of money as much stake in the soil as though he were the owner in Sutherland of two thousand acres: and each one of the ten thousand men who own collectively three-fourths of Glasgow, has as much stake in the soil as though he were the owner in Sutherland of three thousand four hundred acres.
[14] This is Mr. Giffen’s estimate. Mr. Mulhall, who has made independent calculations, does not differ from Mr. Giffen by more than five per cent.
[15] General merchandise is estimated by Mr. Mulhall at three hundred and forty-three million pounds. For every hundred inhabitants in the year 1877 there were five horses, twenty-eight cows, seventy-six sheep, and ten pigs. In 1881 there were in Great Britain five million four hundred and seventy-five thousand houses. The rent of eighty-seven per cent of these was under thirty pounds a year, and the rental of more than a half averaged only ten pounds. The total house-rental of Great Britain in that year was one hundred and fourteen million pounds; and the aggregate total of houses over thirty pounds annual value was sixty million pounds; though in point of number these houses were only thirteen per cent of the whole.
[16] This classification of houses may perhaps be objected to; but from the above point of view it is correct. Houses represent an annual income of one hundred and thirty-five million pounds. Not more than thirty-five million pounds are spent annually in building new houses; whilst the whole are counted as representing a new one hundred million pounds every year. It is plain, therefore, that if we estimate the entire annual value as above, the sum in question stands not for the houses, but for the use of them. Even more clearly does the same reasoning apply to railways and shipping. Whether we send goods by these or are conveyed by them ourselves, all that we get from them is the mere service of transport. On transport and travelling by railway about seventy million pounds are spent annually: by ship about thirty million pounds; by trams about two million pounds.