◆¹ Interest, then, or the sum which those who use Capital pay to those who own it, having decreased, as we have seen it has done, with the development of our industrial system, it remains to show the reader where the sum thus saved has gone. It must have gone to one or other of two classes of people: to the men of Ability, or to the labourers. If it had gone to the former,—that is, to the employers of Labour,—their gains now would be greater, in proportion to the Capital employed by them, than they were fifty years ago; but if their gains have not become greater, then the sum in question must obviously have found its way to the labourers. And that such is the case will be made sufficiently evident by the fact that Mr. Giffen has demonstrated in the most conclusive way that, if rent and the interest taken by the classes that pay income-tax had increased as fast as the sum actually taken by Labour, the sum assessed to income-tax would be _four hundred million pounds_ greater than it is, and the sum taken by Labour _four hundred million pounds_ less.[50] In this case the wealthier classes would be now taking _one thousand and sixty million pounds_, instead of the _six hundred million pounds_ which they actually do take;[51] and the labouring classes, instead of taking, as they do, _six hundred and sixty million pounds_, or, as Mr. Giffen maintains, more, would be taking only _two hundred and sixty million pounds_.[52] In fact, as Mr. Giffen declares, “It would not be far short of the mark to say that the whole of the great improvement of the last fifty years has gone to the masses.” And the accuracy of this statement is demonstrated in a very striking way by the fact that had the whole improvement, according to the contrary hypothesis, gone not to the labourers, but to the classes that pay income-tax, the remainder, namely, _two hundred and sixty million pounds_, would correspond, almost exactly, allowing for the increase of their numbers, with what the labouring classes received at the close of the last century. [Sidenote ◆1 What the social reformer should study is not the dreams of Socialists, but the forces actually at work, through which Labour has already gained, and is gaining so much.] ◆¹ What, then, the social reformer, what the labourer, and the friend of Labour, ought to study with a view to improving the condition of the labouring classes, is not the theories and dreams of those who imagine that the improvement is to be made only by some reorganisation of society, but the progress, and the causes of the progress, that these classes have actually been making, not only under existing institutions, but through them, because of them, by means of them. CHAPTER III _Of the Causes owing to which, and the Means by which Labour participates in the growing Products of Ability._