ABSTRACT
During the last hundred and fifty years there has been a substantial increase in productivity and affluence in some countries, and its effect has been increasingly felt by ever larger numbers of people in these countries. At the same time very little change of this kind has taken place in the rest of the world. In the following chapters an attempt is made to examine the conditions which made the increase in productivity and affluence possible and to trace its progress in the countries in which it is most evident.
