Health, Wealth and Population in the Early Days of the Industrial Revolution

Abstract

THE author of this book is lecturer on economics in the University of Reading. The work is one which, in our opinion, is of firstclass importance, written in a most interesting style, and we heartily commend it to all our readers. It is difficult within the compass of a review to give an adequate idea of the value of its contents. It deals with a subject which has caused acute controversy, and still awakens intense emotion in the minds of many of our countrymen—namely, the so-called industrial revolution. Although the author approves of the use of this term, and indeed states that the industrial revolution was of such magnitude as to dwarf all political revolutions, yet we think that the word revolution is misapplied in this case. This word has always been held to denote a violent upheaval and overturning of the social order by insurgence from within; but the industrial revolution was merely an extremely rapid evolution due to purely natural causes, as the author convincingly shows; and it had declared itself, shown all its characteristic features, and accomplished much of its course before any political change took place at all.

Health, Wealth and Population in the Early Days of the Industrial Revolution.

By M. C. Buer. Pp. xl + 290. (London: G. Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1926.) 10s. 6d. net.