Dr. Bowley's conclusions for the pre-war period were: "The broad results of this investigation are to show that the national dividend increased more rapidly than the population in the gener ation before the war, so that average incomes were quite one-third greater in 1913 than in 1880. The increase was gained principally before 190o, since when it barely kept pace with the diminishing value of money. The increase was shared with remarkable equality among the various economic classes. Property obtained a diminish ing share of the home product, but an unchanged share of the whole income when income from abroad is included.
"The only marked alteration that has been found is the increase of the intermediate class that contains persons with small salaries, profits or earnings in other forms than wages. These include clerks and others in retail and wholesale distributive trade, and the younger or less successful persons in teaching and other profes sions.
"Manual labourers have been a diminishing proportion of the British population. More of the whole effort of the population has turned to direction, distribution and exchange, and relatively less to production. This has been rendered possible, it may reason ably be presumed, by the increasing services of capital to produc tion, and probably also by the increased intelligence of labour." British Incomes in 1801 and 1920.—Sir Josiah Stamp made a comparison over 120 years (18o1 and 1920), the main conclu sions of which were as follows: Of the total number of people with incomes over 1200 per annum in 1801, the 1200 to £500 class were 61.5 per cent, in 1920 71.3 per cent ; the £500 to ir,000 class were 21.3 per cent, in 1920 15.8 per cent; the ii,000 to f2,000 class 10.3 per cent, in 1920 7.8 per cent; the £2,000 to f5,000 class were 5.3 per cent, in 1920 3.7 per cent; the over 15,000 class were then 1.4 per cent, in 1920 1.3 per cent. In this sense there were in 1920 relatively fewer rich people; for each class, save the lowest, was in 1920 a smaller percentage than before. But this result is entirely due to the 1920 preponderance of the 1200 to f5oo class. Perhaps it was by 1920 easier to bring in these people to assessment than it used to be in 1801, and the numbers then may have been exceptionally defective. Let us assume that condition, and deal with only the total number having incomes of over iso,000 per annum. Then we get a remarkably close parallel.
The f5oo to Li,000 class were 56%, in 1920 55.2%
" f r,000 " £2,000 " " 26.3%, 1920 27.3% " £2,000 15,000 13.9%, 1920 13.0% " over is,000 7, I,3.8%, 4.5% This indicates that the people with over 1500 a year were in 1920 distributed in income classes practically the same as in 1801. But if we look at the amounts of income in the classes, the results are rather different, for there was relatively a larger sum in the hands of the "over L5,000" class in 1920 than in 18or. He gave a table for incomes over isoo: A British Official Estimate of Income Distribution.—The Board of Inland Revenue gave the Royal Commission on Income Tax (1920) a complete distribution table of the whole assessed income for 1919 amounting to 2,073 millions (subject to a con siderable margin of error) as follows (revised in their 64th Annual Report, p. '12) :— This result is consistent with the following theoretical solution: The total nominal income increased much more than the total population—the increase surged upwards through all the fixed classes, so that there was in 1920 a smaller population in the ranks of the poorest, with a nominal income of say under £80 a year, and many more in the over i5,00o class, but the slope of distribution had hardly altered.
Let us examine this in the light of the total numbers and sums assessed. The population subjected to the tax law had increased not quite five times, but the people with incomes over £200 had increased on these tables 25 times, and their income 24 times; even if we suppose the old tables were only half the truth, there was in 1920 an increase in numbers and income of 121 times, or 21 times the rate of the increase in population. If we take those over £500, the numbers are 19 times, and the income 2 2 times as great, and halving these again, for precaution, we have, roughly, an increase at twice the rate of increase of the population.