§ 2. The industrial history of a country like England can furnish no sufficient data for a conclusive general judgment of the case. The enormous expansion of production induced by the application of machinery in certain branches of textile industry during the first half of this century indisputably led to an increased demand for English labour in trades directly or indirectly connected with textile production. But, in the first place, this cannot be regarded as a normal result of a fall of prices due to textile machinery, but is largely attributable to an expansion in the area of consumption--the acquisition of vast new markets--in which greater efficiency and cheapness of transport played the most considerable part. Secondly, assuming that the more pressing needs of the vast body of consumers are already satisfied by machine-made textile goods, we are not at liberty to conjecture that any further cheapening of goods, owing to improved machinery, will have a correspondent effect on consumption and the demand for labour. If England had been a self-contained country, manufacturing only for her own market, the result of machinery applied to textile industries would without doubt have been a considerable net displacement of textile labour, making every allowance for growth of population and increased home consumption. The expansion of English production under the rapid development of machinery in the nineteenth century cannot therefore be taken as a right measure of the normal effects of the application of machinery. What direct evidence we have of the effect of machinery upon demand for labour is very significant. Mr. Charles Booth, in his _Occupations of the People_, presents an analysis of the census returns, showing the proportion of the population engaged in various employments at decennial points from 1841 to 1881. To these may be added such statistics of the 1891 census as the present condition of their presentation allows us to relate to the former censuses.[177] If we turn to manufactures, upon which, together with transport, machinery exercises the most direct influence, we find that the aggregate of manufactures shows a considerable increase in demand for labour up to 1861--that is, in the period when English wares still kept the lead they had obtained in the world market--but that since 1861 there is a positive decline in the proportion of the English population employed in manufactures. The percentages up to 1881 run as follows:-- 1841[178] 27.1 per cent. 1851 32.7 " 1861 33.0 " 1871 31.6 " 1881 30.7 "