s, and only a
small proportion of the population that live in the country is
actually supported by agriculture. Agriculture, in fact, supports only
fifteen per cent. of the population in all Britain, and in England
only ten per cent. Three and a half times as many people are
personally engaged in manufactures as in rural pursuits. For three
quarters of a century the population in towns and cities has been
growing four times faster than the population of the rural parts. At
the same time the working power of the urban population has been
constantly growing more effective. In fifty years, by the general
adoption of machinery, the effective working power of the British
workman has been increased sixfold. In England eighty-six per cent. of
the total work of the country is done by steam, and in Scotland ninety
per cent. Great Britain, therefore, has become practically one great
beehive of mercantile and manufacturing industry. Agriculture as a
general occupation of the people, except in the production of the
finer food products, such as choice beef and mutton and high-grade
dairy products, is no longer profitable. Indeed, during the last
fifteen years the plant (including land) employed in agricultural
industries has been depreciating in value at the rate of $150,000,000
yearly; that is, in these fifteen years the enormous sum of
$2,250,000,000 of capital employed in agriculture has been
obliterated. But the gain to capital employed in profitable mercantile
and manufacturing pursuits has much more than compensated for this
enormous loss in agriculture.

GREAT BRITAIN'S COAL-FIELDS AND IRON DEPOSITS

One reason for the great development which Britain has made as a
manufacturing and trading nation lies in the fact that Britain was the
first nation to utilise on a large scale the power of steam as a help
to manufacture and trade. The steam-engine was a British invention.
The first railways were built in Britain. The first steamship to cross
the Atlantic was a British enterprise. A second reason lies in the
fact that when Britain began to use steam as a motive power she found
her supplies of coal so near her iron mines, and so near her clays and
earths needed for her potteries, that from the very first she was able
to manufacture cheaply and undersell most of her competitors. Her
coal-fields have an area of over 12,000 square miles, and wherever her
coal-beds are other natural products have been found near by, so that
her man