STOCK EXCHANGE AND AMERICAN BUSINESS 495 
flexibility was imparted to the production and distribution of 
goods. At once more goods became available for human con- 
sumption, the individual struggle for existence became easier, 
and the populations of the civilized nations began to grow. A 
well-known economic authority? has stated that during the 
single century from 1651 to 1751, when the first real indica- 
tions of the coming capitalistic era were manifested, the pop- 
ulation of Great Britain increased from 6,378,000 to 7,392,000. 
But during the next century (1751-1851), which witnessed the 
establishment of steam production, steam distribution, modern 
banking, and the London Stock Exchange, the population shot 
upward to 21,185,000, an increase of 13,793,000. Even more 
astonishing was the increase in population during the next 
sixty years (1851-1911), by 19,350,000 to a total in 1911 of 
40,535,000. Nor do these figures reflect the huge emigration 
of Englishmen to all parts of the world, which occurred during 
the same periods. As Hartley Withers has so well remarked : 2* 
Merely to enable so large a number of people to be alive is not 
everything, but it is a great deal. Under Capitalism, all these millions 
saw the light of the sun, smelt the scent of spring, knew love and 
friendship, made and laughed at good and bad jokes, ate and digested 
their meals, made their queer guesses at the secret of life, played 
games, read books, cherished their hobbies and their prejudices, knew 
a little, thought they knew much more, and went their way leaving 
others behind them to take up the thread of life and spin another 
strip of its mysterious cloth. . . . If life is a good thing—and 
most of us waste little time in sending for a doctor if we do not feel 
well—Capitalism has made the enjoyment of that good possible to 
millions. 
Owing to the constant stream of immigration into this 
country, figures for the growth of population in the United 
States are not so conclusive. Yet it is undoubtedly true that 
under any system where a surplus of goods and securities could 
not be speculatively carried and distributed, our country could 
not possibly have attained its present great population, nor 
ia Dr Shadwell, “The History of Industrialism,” in the Encyclopedia of Indus- 
%# Hartley Withers, “The Case for Capitalism,” p. 116.