40 
INTRODUCTION. 
-which 963 furnished the annual returns required 
by the Act. The number of members amounted 
to 490,584; the share capital to £5,347,199; the 
loan and deposit capital to £692,478. The sales 
of goods during the year 1878 were £18,461,753, 
and the stock in trade at the end of the year 
£2,281,898. The profit balance of the year was 
£1,565,497, the trade charges having been 
£1,306,804. The year in question, however, had 
been an unfavourable one for trade, and the sales 
and profits were below those of previous years. 
76. It may be interesting to compare these 
figures with those of the year 1868—ten years 
earlier—as given in a previous Work of the 
present Editor (a). The number of societies 
making returns was then 675, showing an in 
crease of 43 per cent, in the ten years ; but the 
number of members was only 209,000, and has 
therefore increased by 135 per cent. By a 
strange coincidence the share capital, which was 
then £2,020,000, has increased in precisely the 
same proportion, viz. 135 per cent. The loan 
capital had increased in even greater proportion, 
from £184,000 to £692,000, or 276 per cent.; and 
the last amount, it should be remarked, showed 
a falling off in the year 1878 from £917,000. 
The loan capital had therefore been increased 
fivefold in the nine years from 1868 to 1877. 
The sales of the year 1868 were £8,113,000, 
.showing an increase in ten years of 128 per cent. 
(a) Law relating to Industrial and Provident Societies. 
By E. W. Brabrook. London, 1^69.