As the Board of Trade point out "It is not to be supposed that the returns received represent in their exact proportions the different grades of working-class incomes in the towns of the United Kingdom. The higher range of family incomes is unduly represented in the returns, partly owing to the fact that the more intelligent operatives have supplied returns more readily and more accurately than those belonging to the unskilled labouring classes."

It is of interest to note that the 261 budgets under 25s. per week averaged 21s. 4½d. per week, which closely corresponds to Mr Rowntree's primary poverty line. The expenditure on food is seen to be 14s. 4¾d. or 1s. 6¾d. more than was allowed by Mr Rowntree. Thus only 6s. 11¾d. per week is left for all other expenditures, including rent, fuel, light, clothes and furniture. If we take the class above, between 25s. and 30s., we see that only 9s. 1½d. is left after payment for food. Even in the class earning from 30s. to 35s. the food bill leaves but 11s. 2d. per week for rent and all other requirements.

If we pass from the town to the country and inquire into the condition of the agricultural labourer we find an even smaller command of comfort. At the census of 1901 the number of agricultural labourers, shepherds, etc., was 956,000. What of cottons or woollens or boots or furniture can these command? The late Mr Arthur Wilson Fox in the invaluable Report (Cd. 2376) on the wages of agricultural labourers, which was such a labour of love to him, shows that their total earnings including the value of all "truck" vary from 14s. 6d. per week in Oxfordshire to 22s. in Durham, the average being 18s. 3d. for the whole of England. In Wales the average is 17s. 3d.; in Scotland 19s. 3d. and in Ireland only 10s. 11d. The expenditure on clothing in England varies between £6 and £10 by a family of six persons; in Ireland, of course, it is much less.

The simple truth is that the total demand for clothes and underclothes, hats, boots, furniture, china, glass, ironmongery, domestic utensils and other comforts by about 20,000,000 of people out of our population of 44,500,000 is exceedingly small. The greater part of slender incomes is absorbed by the cost of food and drink, and after provision is made for rent, fuel and lighting, the balance amounts to a few odd shillings. We need not wonder, then, that our textile industries have to meet such a modest home demand, or that the Mayor of Leicester cries out for a new industry to employ "surplus labour."

Let us consider the position of bootmakers as customers for the textile trades. The Census figures of 1901 for the boot trade were as follows (England and Wales; 22,000 dealers included):

PERSONS EMPLOYED IN BOOT AND SHOE TRADE,
1901, ENGLAND AND WALES

The average earnings of these workers are actually less than £1 per week. The Board of Trade publish monthly the earnings of a representative number of them, derived from particulars furnished by employers. The "Labour Gazette" for August 1910 showed that in July 1910, 60,337 boot workers took £58,147 in a week, or about 19s. per week. After paying for rent and food, how little is left to provide custom for the makers of cottons or woollens. And equally, when textile workers draw meagre wages, how little is left, after the gratification of primal needs, to provide custom for the maker of boots.

Thus the error in the distribution of income connotes an error in the distribution of our population amongst useful and useless, noble and ignoble, industries. Too few of our population are engaged in the manufacture of houses, boots, textiles, and furnishings. Too many of our population are engaged either in the direct production of luxuries or in the production of useful articles to be exchanged for foreign luxuries. The great masses of our people are under-served; a small proportion of our people are over-served. There is enough labour put forth to give material happiness and comfort to all, but so much of the labour runs to waste that only one-ninth of our population can be said fully to possess the means of comfort.

Considerations such as these make us understand how futile it is to boast of the aggregate trade, internal or external, of a nation, or to term that wealth "national" which is the possession of a few.