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CONSUMPTION  AND  PRODUCTIVE  POWER  65

rightly  associates  the  glut  of  money  with  a  glut  of  capital,
affirming  that  “  the  amazing  production  of  wealth  under
the  new  industrial  conditions  is  rapidly  altering  the  proportion ­
  between  the  supply  of  capital  and  the  demand
for  it.”  *
§  8.  Faihirc  of  Consumption  to  Keep  Pace  with
Growth  of  Productive  Power.
The  opening  up  of  vast  new  tracts  of  land  for  the
growth  of  our  food  and  raw  material  of  manufacture,  the
huge  accumulation  of  capital  in  the  shape  of  fixed  plant
and  power-driven  machinery  of  manufacture  and  transport,
the  rapid  growth  of  an  intelligent  and  closely  co-operative
population  have,  during  the  last  few  generations,  multiplied
twentyfold  or  more  the  general  productive  power  of  the
community.  The  actual  standard  of  consumption  for
nearly  every  class  of  the  community  has  likewise  been
raised.  The  landowning  classes  live  far  more  expensively
than  they  did  at  the  opening  of  the  present  century;
the  owners  of  manufacturing  and  trading  capital  form  a
numerous  new  class  of  consumers  whose  expenditure  has
grown  continuously;  statistics  of  working-class  life  show
that,  except  among  the  very  poor,  the  general  standard
of  comfort  is  considerably  higher  than  it  was,  though
the  stability  of  the  standard  is  grievously  impaired  by
growing  irregularity  of  work.  But,  great  as  this  general
rise  in  the  consumption  of  the  people  may  appear,  it
has  been  far  less  rapid  than  the  growth  of  productive
power.  The  industrial  revolution  has  not  been  attended
by  a  commensurate  revolution  in  the  consuming  habits  of

*  “Nineteenth  Century,”  April  1896.