24

THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  UNEMPLOYED

to  believe  that  the  “waste”  of  labour-power  and  the
economic  “unemployment”  in  the  extractive  and  manufacturing ­
  trades  taken  as  a  whole  is  very  much  underrepresented ­
  by  the  evidence  which  is  drawn  exclusively
from  the  higher  grades  of  the  best  organised  trades.
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  our  enquiry  has  so
far  confined  itself  almost  entirely  to  the  wage-earners  in
the  manufacturing  trades  and  in  mining.  How  far  can  the
conclusions  which  apply  there  be  extended  to  employment ­
  in  general  ?
§  12.  Proportion  of  Manufacturing  to  Distributive
Work  in  England.
We  are  so  accustomed  to  regard  ourselves  as  a  manufacturing ­
  nation  as  to  forget  that  less  than  one-third  of
the  occupied  classes  of  the  English  nation  are  engaged
in  manufacture.  Unfortunately,  the  method  of  our  Census
Returns  does  not  enable  us  to  say  with  any  precision
how  many  persons  are  engaged  in  manufactures  as  wageearners
  ;  but  the  careful  investigations  of  Mr.  Booth  into
the  Census  Returns  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  the
proportion  of  English  people  engaged,  not  merely  in  the
staple  manufactures  but  in  manufactures  as  a  whole,  has
been  gradually  declining  since  1861.  The  percentages

up  to  1881  run  as  follows:
1841  ........  27.1  per  cent.
1851  327
1861  33.0  „
1871  ........  31.6
1881  30.7

If  we  could  separate  the  “makers”  from  the  “dealers”
in  our  latest  Census  Reports,  I  feel  sure  we  should  find