r cent. The dealing classes show
likewise a great increase. Merchants and agents increase from 285,138
to 363,037, dealers in money are about 30 per cent. more numerous,
while insurance employs more than double the number employed in 1881,
and six times the number of 1871. Taking drapers and mercers as
indicative of the dealing class in a staple trade, we find an increase
from 82,362 to 107,018, or 29.9 per cent. The numbers of those
employed in thirteen representative retail trades have increased
between 1881 and 1891 by not less than 27.9 per cent.

[Illustration: DIAGRAM (COMPARISON OF ENGLISH EMPLOYMENTS).]

When we look at these figures there can be no doubt that one indirect
result of the increased production due to the application of machinery
has been increased employment in the distributing and transport
industries. This increased employment in transport is by no means
confined to the new services of steam locomotion by land and sea. The
earlier apprehensions that railways would destroy road traffic is not
justified by experience. Though employment on railways has of course
grown very fast, road traffic has increased almost in the same ratio.

Railways. Roads.
1841 .03 .7
1851 .3 .9
1861 .5 1.1
1871 .8 1.2
1881 1.2 1.5
1891 1.4 2.8

The census returns for the United States show clearly that carts and
horses have not been displaced by railways, or, more strictly
speaking, that railways have made more cartage work than they have
taken away. In 1850 the manufacture of carriages and waggons employed
15,590 men, in 1870 it employed 54,928. During the same period of
railway growth the number of horses in the country increased from
4,336,717 to 7,145,370. In fact, while the population grew 66 per
cent., the number of carriage and cart makers, in spite of the
increased use of labour-saving machinery in their manufacture, grew
more than 200 per cent.

It must, however, be clearly recognised that the direct effect of
machinery upon the transport industries also is to cause a diminished
proportionate employment of labour. A comparison of the two chief
branches of steam locomotion will bring this home.

Machinery occupies a very different place in the railway from that
which it occupies in steam transport by sea. The engine only
indirectly determines and regulates the work of the majority of
railway men. Mos