THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC 447In three decades, the population had risen from 23.9 million in the first post-
war census of 14 February 1946 to an estimated 35.1 million by 1979. The
tremendous boost in the birth-rate, which stood at 29.1 per thousand in 1955
before falling to 16.6/00 by 1970, had caused marked 'bulges' and troughs in the
demographic pattern. In 1971, people dependent on industrial employment
accounted for 42. per cent of the population; those dependent on agriculture for
29.5 per cent; town-dwellers for 52.7 per cent; females for 54.2 per cent; children
under 18 years for 32.2 per cent; and non-Poles for only 1.3 per cent. In contrast
to earlier periods, the population of Poland was predominantly urban, and
industrial; it is youthful, and is at last overwhelmingly Polish.^44
Economic management had continued along lines laid down in the Stalinist
period. Centralized state planning on the basis of Five Year Plans - 1956-60,
1961-5, 1966-70, 1971-5, 1976-80 - still governed every aspect of economic
activity. Minor experiments in the 1970s in the realm of directorial responsibil-
ity and financial profitability did not involve any considerable move in the direc-
tion of a 'market economy' as practised in recent years in Hungary.^45
Industry had developed very rapidly. The global index of industrial produc-
tion (1950 = 100) rose to 200 at the end of the Six Year Plan, to 317 by 1960, to
475 by 1965, to 708 in 1970, and to 940 in 1974. Many branches of industry, such
as chemicals, machine tools, electronics, and armaments, which hardly existed
before the war, were now thriving. The importation of western machinery, and
of western technology was increasing fast. At the same time, the endless list of
negative deformations freely admitted by the Party, included 'deficient techno-
logical innovations', 'poor organization of labour', 'excessive consumption of
raw materials', 'wastage of power', 'faulty co-ordination', 'inattention to qual-
ity', 'underinvestment, in the consumer sector', and 'poor social and work con-
ditions'. Poland's Second Industrial Revolution had brought more comfort to
the statisticians than to the ordinary consumer.^46
Agriculture, once Poland's staple industry, became the problem child of the
economy. Decollectivization in 1956-7 had decimated the number of collective
farms, leaving 83 per cent of the arable land in the private ownership of small,
ill-equipped, horse-drawn peasants. Except in the Recovered Territories where
the PGRs survived in greater number, agricultural organization fell mainly to
co-operative farmers'.circles. Global production improved some 70 per cent
over the 1950 level. Electrification of the farms was almost complete, and,
despite the Party's reluctance'to construct small tractors suitable for
peasant holdings, mechanization was spreading from the state to the private
sector. But successive campaigns, under Gomutka for complete agricultural self-
sufficiency, and under Gierek for increased deliveries, met with successive fail-
ure. Demand outpaced supply, and food shortages, especially of meat, were still
endemic.^47
Poland's Foreign Trade was still a state monopoly dominated by commerce
within the socialist bloc. Although trade with the advanced industrial countries
of the West rose sharply to 34.2 per cent of Export and 38 per cent of Imports in