To regard economic progress as the normal and natural condition of human affairs is to betray the limitation of one's mind in both time and space. of the continents of the globe, Northern Europe, America, Australasia, and Japan have, during the last century, made genuine and striking economic progress. But in Southern and Eastern Europe the evidences of progress are much more dubious. The great bulk of Africa's population remains in an entirely primitive stage of economic development; while in Asia, other than Japan (in which continent over half of the world's population is to be found) there is evidence of actual economic retrogression during the period which we are pleased to call “the century of progress”. Even within the favoured minority of countries where genuine economic progress has been made, the rate of this progress is often grossly exaggerated. Alleviating the colossal total of the world's poverty will take much longer than some people think.

The attention devoted to statistics by certain economic historians, particularly that great pioneer Thorold Rogers, is now enabling us to see that our economic history in past centuries by no means consisted of that steady improvement in standards of living which some would have us believe in. Sufficient figures indicative of wages and retail prices in England are available to give some indication of the real standard of living of artisans in England from the beginning of the eighteenth century onwards.