*

Much of the matter contained in the "Statistical Monographs" was
condensed by me in a volume called _Social Reform_. This was a study,
more minute and extensive than any which I had attempted before, of the
income of this country and its distribution among various classes of
the population, not only as they were at the beginning of the twentieth
century, but also as they were in the earlier years of the nineteenth.
My authorities with regard to the latter were certain elaborate but
little known official papers showing the results of the income tax of
the year 1801. These returns, by means of a minute classification, show
the number of incomes from those between L60 and L70 up to those
exceeding L5,000, the upshot being that the masses--manual and other
wage-workers--were enjoying just before the war an average income per
head more than double that which would have been possible a hundred
years ago had the entire income of the country--the incomes of rich and
poor alike--been then divided in equal shares among everybody. This same
general fact had been broadly insisted on in _Labor and the Popular
Welfare_. It was here demonstrated in detail by official records, to
which I had not had access at the time when I wrote that volume, and of
the very existence of which most politicians are probably unaware
to-day. _Social Reform_ was, however, published at an unlucky moment. It
had not reached more than a small number of readers before the war, for
a time, put a stop to economic thought, and left men to illustrate
economic principles by action, thereby providing fresh data for economic
theory of the future.

CHAPTER XVII

THE AUTHOR'S WORKS SUMMARIZED

A Boy's Conservatism--Poetic Ambitions--The Philosophy of
Religious Belief--The Philosophy of Industrial
Conservatism--Intellectual Torpor of Conservatives--Final
Treatises and Fiction.

I began these memoirs with observing that they are in part a mere series
of sketches and social anecdotes strung on the thread of the writer's
own experiences, and as such illustrating the tenor of his social and
mental life, but that in part they are illustrative in a wider sense
than this. His literary activities may be looked on as exemplifying the
moral and social reactions of a large number of persons, to the great
changes and movements in thought and in social politics by which the
aspect of the world has been affected, both for them and him, from the