LORD EMMOTT & THE NATION'S WEALTH.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1645, 11 January 1913, Page 3

LORD EMMOTT & THE NATION'S WEALTH.

"ABE THE RICH RICHER AND THE POOR POORERP" , Lord Emmott, the Under Secretary for the Colonies, delivered an address in tho Oldham Equitable Society's Hall on November 27 on "Are the rich growing richer and the poor poorer,?" He said it was a well-known fact that the position of the working classes had improved considerably, during the last thirty years, greatly in tho last fifty, and more mainly in the. hundred. But during the last thirty years a portion of the workers had not received an advance of wages commensurate with tho increase in the price of commodities, and their position was, therefore, undoubtedly worse, than it was ten years ago. It was equally true that during the same period the gross and net assessments for income tax of people possessing w£lGo a year and over had increased greatly; so had the figures of our foreign trade and our Bankers' Clearing-house returns. In other words, there had.been two trade booms during [the last ten years, but the position of the worker had deteriorated rather,than' improved to that period. It was a disquieting fact that the wages of workers had hardly increased at all during a period of prosperity, while the price of commodities had grown considerably. He did not. believe, however, that the set-back was morfcthjin temporary. q> It was riot proved that the rich had become richor (of late years. In the course of the next ten or twenty years wo would have figures which would show whether or not the number and average amounts of incomes in excess of ,£SOOO a year were increasing, but at present tho figures did not exist. .Death duty : and inhabited house duty istatistics did not give absolute; proofs, but. so far as they, went they did,not indicate any,alarming increase in the riches of those already rich.' The one certain deduction which could be made both from the number of claims for abatement, of income tax on incomes below: JI7OO a year - and-from inhabited house diity,statistics was that there had been a : great- growth in the number 'of • people with moderate incomes. An examination of Oldham and of the leaders f the cotton spinning and manufacturing trade in Lancashire showed that there was considerable vertictd mobility, and that the employing class was largely recruited from tho operatives. . - - _ Any tendency which' might have existed in the'past for the rich to grow ■ richer would be greatly lessened by increased taxation generally, and especially by the enormously heavy death duties imposed on large properties by the 1909-10 Budget. The period he had been considering ended with that Budget. The new, and he would fain hope the better, period began with that-Budget.: Its effect could not at present be foretold. In speaking of tho poor, for the purpose of his argument ho had aroumed everyone with an income of less than .£l6O to be - poor. : He had not dealt with tho painful and difficult problem of tho very poor. He was not downhearted about the future of the regularity employed working .class. But there was another class which could not find regular employment, and he was not sure I that relatively to:the rest of the population they were not becoming poorer. It was possible that our human scrapheap was growing larger,'and ho feared that its members were growing poorer in comparison, with tho rest of the population. The problem presented to us by tho inefficient was difficult but he was inot hopeless. About it. The sympathy of tho national was roused on their behalf, and the minds of many were striving to find some adequate cure for their ills. That was a different problem from ,tho one that he had been discussin, and he. repeated that, except during the last ten years or so, it was tho fad; that the condition of the poor, as a whole, had shown great advance in the last half-century.