PROPORTION  OF  WORK  IN  ENGLAND

*5

that  the  proportion  of  our  people  engaged  in  manufactures
could  not  be  placed  higher  than  30  per  cent.  Taking
into  account  the  two  great  branches  of  “  extractive”
industry,  agriculture  and  mining,  the  recent  increase  in
the  latter  as  regards  employment  is  approximately  balanced
by  the  decline  of  the  former.  A  considerable  majority
of  the  “employed”  classes,  alike  in  England  and  in  the
United  Kingdom,  are  engaged  in  occupations  which  we
have  not  yet  placed  under  survey  for  the  purpose  of
estimating  “unemployment”  or  “waste.”  An  ever  larger
proportion  of  our  workers  and  employers  are  continually
engaged  in  commercial  and  transport  trades  and  in  the
various  sorts  of  professional,  civil,  and  domestic  service.
Now  it  must  be  at  once  admitted  that  in  many  large
departments  of  these  occupations  the  quantity  of  direct
unemployment”  and  of  other  labour-waste  will  be  much
less  than  in  the  manufacturing  trades.  If,  as  a  rough
estimate,  we  take  13,000,000  as  the  number  of  wageearners
  in  the  United  Kingdom,  it  is  not  likely  that  more
than  4,000,000  *  are  engaged  in  manufactures.  The  large
class  engaged  in  retail-dealing,  which,  from  official  evidence, ­
  seems  to  be  growing  more  than  twice  as  fast  as
the  population,  and  which  affords  an  ever-growing  proportion ­
  of  employment,  and  the  “  commercial”  classes,  which
ln  most  departments  are  growing  still  more  rapidly,  cannot,
I  think,  be  charged  with  so  large  a  proportion  of  “  unemployment” ­
  as  belongs  to  the  manufactures.
The  general  summary  of  groups  of  occupations  from  the
Lensus  of  course  includes  large  bodies  of  employers  as  well  as
the  whole  class  of  dealers.