The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Impending Crisis, by Basil A. Bouroff

THE IMPENDING CRISIS

CONDITIONS RESULTING FROM THE

CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH

IN THE UNITED STATES.

BY

BASIL A. BOUROFF,

Graduate Student of the University of Chicago.

PUBLISHERS,

Midway Press Committee,

CHICAGO.

1900.

Copyright, 1900, by

MIDWAY PRESS COMMITTEE.

PREFACE.

This is not a novel, nor a work of fiction; it is based on the facts of the Eleventh Census and other statistical reports, and on the most reliable authorities on these subjects. This book represents the most essential and fundamental features of the nation’s situation. It shows the reasons why your cities rapidly become the property of a comparatively very few persons; why the American farmers lose their ground, and the urban population lose liberty; and why all become absolutely dependent upon a few multi-millionaires. It exposes the conditions in consequence of which the whole nation becomes a nation of mere tenants of farms and homes, paying rents; and, while the wealth increases, the greatest majority of the people come into desperate struggle not for pleasure, but for simple existence.

In order to impart as much knowledge in regard to the situation of the nation as possible, it was found necessary to supply the readers with a sufficient comparison of statistical facts, pointing to the differences of averages made by different authorities on the subject. This comparison has also been introduced for the purpose of indicating certain truths of special value, and for finding the true bases of reasonably dealing with the most vital problem of the national existence. This problem involving conditions that cause the commonly recognized social unrest of the present time is a problem which grows in intensity.

Recognizing the difficulty in solving the problem and the danger of the situation, we should not wonder, if the very persons who are always inclined to make discounts in established truths, will be profoundly surprised to know from the final conclusions here presented, that the time of discounts has passed away, and that it is now too late to ignore the facts of so serious significance.

If this work should come to be regarded as a general diagnosis of the diseased situation, we may rest assured that there are many thousands of people who will count it their sacred duty to find the proper remedy for curing the disease of the national organism. For it will be seen that the situation is rapidly growing worse every year with the increase of population, and there must be an end to the disease. Surely, if the increase of the national wealth is becoming less than the continual net incomes of the private monopolies, trusts and combinations, it is not difficult to recognize that the situation is already very bad. It is therefore desirable that every one should carefully learn the situation.

THE AUTHOR.

Chicago, April 1, 1900.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES.

When a heavy mass of clouds suddenly rises in a clear sky, every one thinks that a terrific storm is to follow, displaying a great store of pent up forces. And many people |SIGNS OF THE TIMES.| never make a single mistake in predicting from so ominous a summer sky what is going to take place. Some similar forecasting is now going on within the consciousness of the people. For nearly every one more or less clearly feels that he is heavily pressed upon by some portent in the national life. And every one whose mental horizon is clear enough and wide enough sees, beyond the outward appearance, that something dangerous is stored in the nation. It may be something so unusually great in its force, something so explosive, something so combustible, that with the new century it may terribly shake the world.

It was quite recently when the “North American” of Philadelphia asked the question, “What has the Nineteenth Century in store for Philadelphia?” And by its own admission the replies received were amazing. In summing them up, before spreading them at large before its readers, it said:

“Substantial business men, whose names are almost household words, solemnly affirm that with opinions of the new century will come revolution and bloodshed. Leading lawyers |OPINIONS OF BUSINESS MEN.| say the tendency will be toward socialism. Bankers join with labor leaders in forecasting the triumph of the single-tax theory and the consequent overthrow of existing social conditions. That such a tremendous undercurrent of dissatisfaction and unrest exists in this city will undoubtedly come as a shock to thousands of conservative citizens. The opinions given are not those of labor agitators or anarchists. They are the careful expressions of men of wealth and of broad education. The revolutionary suggestions were not shouted upon the street in time of riot and excitement, but were given deliberately while the speakers sat in their well furnished offices, surrounded by comforts and evidences of prosperity.[^[1]]” So then the Nineteenth Century has stored up in the social organism of the nation enough material to produce revolution and bloodshed in the Twentieth Century.

And Mr. Louis Post says in “The Public” of Chicago: “Our leisurely friends of Philadelphia, who are to be envied, by the way, and not sneered at, for being philosophical enough and sensible enough to keep so much unwholesome hustle out of their lives—these slow and sober people must have been ‘startled’ by the above ‘revelations’ of the Philadelphia North American, that ancient landmark, now in its 128th year.[^[2]] It was undoubtedly an amazing surprise in view of its age that the answer of its readers was, as you see, ‘revolution and bloodshed.’

If similar questions were presented to the thinking public of the various cities of the United States, we might have thousands of like opinions and all of them would be conditioned by sufficient reasons.

One of the most prominent thinkers of the city of Chicago[^[3]] also quite recently said that “the Twentieth Century will bring to us the bloodiest revolution that human |OPINIONS OF LEARNED MEN.| history ever witnessed.” And his assertion was not less amazing than was the affirmation of the substantial business men of Philadelphia. If it were honest and right to expose the names of men whose confidential conversations led to the same or similar assertions, I alone could make a long list of these names.

They all admit that the nation, as an organism, has long been diseased; its nerves have long been abnormally strained. But, like the friends of Philadelphia, they speak about revolution and bloodshed which is but the last and most convulsive stage of any nation’s serious disease. And it is true that, when this stage is reached, it is impossible to avoid the most intolerable operation.

But the amazing feature of such opinions is that different men agree in affirming that revolution and bloodshed is almost unavoidable; yet different men, as I know, |CAUSES OF UNREST.| assign different causes for such an undesirable event.[^[4]] Some say it must come because the population increases and the unemployed laborers increase. Others say that the trusts, combinations, and monopolies must ruin the nation. Still others say that progress and poverty, being very rapid in their diverse directions, must rapidly bring the wealthy and the poor into the state of cut-throats against each other. And only very few men understand that all these causes are but secondary, though working to the same horrible end. While the real, effective cause for revolution and bloodshed, with the nation, is the exceedingly unequal distribution of wealth, and its rapid concentration in a very few hands.

It is this situation that our democratic people will not be able to endure, because they are born |PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE BORN FREE.| free, whereas the storing up of wealth in a few hands makes them all economic slaves; deprives them of the privileges they enjoyed; makes them absolutely dependent upon the mercies of the rich, which, if shown to them, they may live; if withheld from them, they must starve to death.

Let us see, then, what it is that the Nineteenth Century has stored up, which is to result in such a terrific convulsion in the Twentieth Century.

The following diagrams present the Logical Premises from which the “revolution and bloodshed,” as a conclusion, must inevitably follow, provided their action is not checked.

Distribution of Wealth in the United States.[^[5]]
Population: 62,622,250. Wealth: $65,037,091,197.

“These diagrams showing by percentages the population and wealth distribution in the United States, according to tables compiled by George K. Holmes, U. S. Census Expert on Mortgage Statistics, are from the Encyclopedia of Social Reform.”

The contents of the above diagrams show on the bases of statistics that in 1890 three hundredths of one per cent of the population, |PERCENTAGES OF WEALTH AND PEOPLE.| which are the millionaires, held 20 per cent of the nation’s wealth. Eight per cent and ninety-seven hundredths of one per cent of the population, which are the rich, held 51 per cent of the wealth. The middle class, consisting of 28 per cent of the population, held 20 per cent of the wealth. The lower class, consisting of 11 per cent of the population, held 4 per cent of the wealth. And the poor class, consisting of 52 per cent of the population, held but 5 per cent of the national wealth,[^[6]] as this table shows:

This illustrative table represents the exact value of the diagrams on p. [5]. And nothing is more interesting in this table than the sad differences in the worth of the groups, and especially when their respective wealth is divided per every head. The right-hand column shows that there are 18,786 persons whose aggregate wealth, if divided equally among them, would give $691,867 to each man, woman, and child. And there are 32,563,644 persons[^[7]] in the last group, whose wealth, if equally divided among them, can give but $99 to every person. These two groups present the greatest possible extremes of group-poverty and group-opulence.

The other three groups, as their averages clearly show, are intermediary between the two extremes. |PER CAPITA WEALTH.| And if all the wealth of the nation were equally divided among its population, we could have $1,036 to every man, woman, and child. This per capita wealth indicates that the nation is very rich on the whole, but its riches, as you see, belong to a very few persons.

What then is the difference between a rich man and a poor man, between a rich woman and a poor woman?

If the 32,563,644 men, women and children had $100 per capita wealth, then one rich man of the first group of the above table, would be worth more |WORTH OF MEN.| than 6,918 men of the last group of the same table. A rich man’s horse often worth more than 10, 20, 30, or even more, poor men taken together. A rich woman’s finger alone worth more than 10 or 20 poor women taken together, because that finger is often embellished with the diamond rings that cost thousands of dollars. A complete ladies’ dress or a costume often amounts to more than $5,000, and hence it is worth more than 40 or 50 women taken together with their dresses. Such are the differences between the rich and the poor people when they are valued by the dollar.

But the dollar differences cause a great many other differences between the rich and the poor. The poor man is not only poor in wealth, but he is poorer still in social |POOR IN SOCIAL RIGHTS.| rights and privileges. And there is no possibility for the poor to rise up out of his poverty. For he has no resources of wealth which the rich people have; and he has no property of his own; for if he is worth but $99, which is really his house-scarb,[^[8]] he has no productive property at all; he is then absolutely dependent upon the mercy of the wealthy, without which he cannot exist even for six months. He cannot acquire higher education and training, because he is encompassed with poverty which furnishes no means for the education that helps men to acquire wealth. Hence, the lack of education keeps the poor in poverty; and this poverty prevents him from getting the helpful education. So that, poverty and ignorance become the bitter enemies of the above millions of individuals in the modern world of progress. Yet the modern poor have a far more potent enemy than poverty and ignorance combined, which we shall see later on.

Meanwhile, we will say here, that the rich are the masters over the poor in the sphere of law, in the sphere of politics, in the club, in the theater, in the church, at home |DOMINANCY OF THE RICH.| and abroad—everywhere; as if all power were given unto them under the heavens over the poor. And how many church-ministers would not give them the same power and the best places in the hereafter? For the very character of sermons in our days depends upon the pleasures of the rich in many churches, because the ministers depend upon the wealthy few more than they depend on the millions of the poor. While all these poor are the rich men’s economic slaves, spending half of their labor energy in favor of the wealthy. That is what the Nineteenth Century has provided for the nation.

But the above statistical conclusions were by many regarded as “roseate” and “extremely moderate conclusions.” And it was in consequence of this that Dr. Spahr |CONCLUSIONS ARE MODERATE.| was obliged to reiterate the expression: “Since the completion of this study, a volume has appeared that must set at rest all question as to the extreme moderation of the estimates reached.”[^[9]] For it was clear that every new investigation of the distribution of wealth confirmed the fact of a more and more rapid concentration of the national wealth in fewer hands than before. And it is the question of poverty, that spreads like contagion, that the American people have now to deal with, in view of a phenomenal increase of the national wealth which concentrates in the few hands. And it is this question that cannot be set at rest while millions grow poorer and poorer and the propertyless increase in numbers, as we shall soon see.

The people cannot set this question at rest until they know the truth of the different statistical tables, indicating the nation’s situation and destiny. And we cannot rest until we make a series of propositions for the purpose of producing more equal distribution of wealth in this country. And even then we cannot rest, until our propositions be applied to the irrational life of the nation, with the purpose of working out justice for the people. When we see all this in their actual life, then we shall rest, as the people shall be regaining their freedom, their property, their resources of income, their rights to work and to enjoy the fruits of their toil. The intelligent people cannot and must not rest before they reach a resting place. They cannot always be deceived by the shallow and selfish arguments which prove that the national wealth increases enormously,—for it so increases only with the few and rapidly decreases with the entire people. But the time will come when the tens of millions will no longer vote for men who deprive them of all rights, self-respect and liberty.

As we shall see later on, the 32,563,644 persons |UTENSILS AS WEALTH.| of the last group of the table I possessed no real wealth at all even at the census in 1890. For though the diagrams represent them as having had $99 worth of wealth to every head, yet this wealth was personal and not productive.

STATISTICAL CONCLUSIONS OF MR. SHEARMAN.

“An estimate of the distribution of wealth in the United States was made by Mr. Thomas G. Shearman |RESEARCHES OF MR. SHEARMAN.| in the ‘Forum’ for 1889, and for January, 1891. It was based on careful estimates of the wealth of the very wealthy, a list of which he gave, and estimates of the division of the remaining wealth of the country between the middle class and the poor based on assessors’ returns.”[^[10]]

“Mr. Shearman came to the conclusion that 1.4 per cent of the population own 70 per cent of the wealth; 9.2 per cent of the population own 12 per cent of the wealth; and 89.4 per cent of the population own only 18 per cent of the wealth.”[^[11]]

In these conclusions, we have a still greater twist of facts by wrong handling. Now, to illustrate these conclusions as they stand by another set of diagrams, they will be as follows:

Population: 62,622,250. Wealth: $65,037,091,197.

These diagrams indicate by percentages the exact conclusions of Mr. Shearman in respect to the population and the wealth distribution in this country. The author |LOOSE AVERAGES.| of these conclusions obviously put too much salt of his own into his averages; for, by parceling out the wealth of a number of the well-to-do and rich people, he succeeded in persuading his readers, that, in America, the body of tens of millions of propertyless people, the paupers and the tramps, do not possess, on an average, less than $200 worth of wealth for each person, including women and children of all ages. Whereas, in reality, the wealth from which he made the fictitious averages, belongs to a very few persons of the nation. While an astonishing majority of the people, as we shall see, have no rights whatever to this wealth.

Let us again illustrate the conclusions in a tabular way for the sake of definiteness:

The first glance at this table and a glance at the table on page 6 show the reader that Mr. Shearman divided the population into three groups; and Mr. Holmes divided it |LINES OF DIVISION OF THE PEOPLE.| into five groups. The bases of division are economic in both tables; but the lines of division are very different with the one statistical authority and the other. If we examine these lines, we shall find that Mr. Holmes’ fifth group consists of over 32½ million persons who, taken together, had been worth a little over 3 billion dollars; so that, each person of the group could have about $99 worth of wealth, as the average of table I shows. The next higher group of the same author, which comprises nearly 7 million persons, had, on an average, more wealth to each person, than each person could have in the fifth group, hence the per capita wealth of the fourth group of people was $377. While the group still higher up in wealth, which consists of little over 17½ million persons, and which had over 13 billion dollars’ worth of wealth, could have $741 to every head, that is, if this wealth were equally divided among them. The second group of Mr. Holmes’ division consists of over 5½ million persons, among whom the poorest ones had, probably not less than $5,000 worth of wealth, as their average worth of over $59,000 shows. Such a division of the population into five economic groups, if every family is rightly and honestly valued, presents an immense amount of truth to the public judgment.[^[13]]

But what Mr. Shearman really did with his estimates and conclusions is this: Seeing that the extent of poverty is appalling, he made the division line in the group of |SWEEPING AVERAGE.| well-to-do people; he thus made the group of the very poor extend so far as to comprise nearly 56 million persons; and then, by dividing the wealth of the well-to-do persons among all these millions, he obtained an average of $209 worth of wealth to every pauper, to every tramp, to every man, woman and child,—who have had no wealth, and have had no rights whatever to the wealth they are nominally represented as entitled to.

Consequently, his distribution of wealth among the third group of people is merely on paper, is nominal, is showy, and it does not correspond to reality with reference |ONLY NOMINAL DISTRIBUTION.| to more than 35 million persons as represented in Mr. Holmes’ distribution of this wealth. Mr. Shearman might as well follow the example of Mr. Carroll D. Wright[^[14]] and, by a single effort in calculation, divide among all individuals the 70 per cent of wealth that belongs to his 1.4 per cent of the people. In doing that, he might apportion more than $1,000 worth of it to |JESUITS AND GALILEO.| every penniless individual, and then might say, Why, we are all rich, we are the most civilized and righteous people in the world! But such an effort, and such an assertion, however, would not at all alter the real situation; no more than Galileo, when in view of the danger of death, signing the Jesuit verdict in favor of the non-revolution of our planet round the sun, could thereby stop the actual revolution of the earth; for the earth’s progressive motion went on, in spite of the ardent desire and policy of the Jesuits to make it stand still by a verdict. Nothing but an indescribable shock of the earth against another heavenly body can change its principles of motion.

The same is true of the nation. Once the principle of concentration of wealth is left unimpeded in its action, it must work out its end; |DANGER.| it must of living necessity produce revolution and bloodshed. And neither the extremely moderate statisticians, nor the false averages, of even of the meanest falsehood, can prevent its action toward such a horrible result. “You remember the French revolution?” |FRENCH REVOLUTION, ROME.| asked Hon. Jno. S. Crosby of his audience in Binghamton,[^[15]] N. Y., and then he said: “In France all the lands had come into the hands of a few people, the king and nobles, and a majority of the people were depending on them for a living. The time came when these down-trodden people rose up and Paris streets ran with blood. Your country will have the same experience if you keep on fooling with the laws of God.

“Rome was once the mistress of the whole world. She lorded it over the other countries. But she fell, and Pliny, her historian, lays the cause of her downfall to land monopoly.”[^[16]] And so it was with ancient Egypt; so it was with ancient Assyria, and so it was with the Byzantine Empire, those great and powerful nations that perished for similar misconduct in relation to themselves.

Exactly so, this young nation also irrationally strides in the way of Rome. The concentration of her wealth in a few hands is now more rapid than it was before the last |RUSH OF THE NATION.| census. That census brought about astonishing conclusions, yet the nation rushes as fast as she can to her ruin. And who can locate the weight of responsibility for her end? Every one seems to think about his selfish interests. Consequently, nothing has been done in the past to evade the ruin; nothing but the greatest national harm is being done in the present; and no fundamental |LOGICAL PREMISES FOR THE YEAR OF....| measure, no rational remedy, no serious means appear for delaying it in the future. While the Logical Premises[^[17]] for revolution and bloodshed have been established in the nation’s life, and their forces have been working to that inexorable end.

Now we are ready to present another conclusion that the statisticians of 1890 reached. It deals with the numbers of families, leaving out the individual inhabitants.

We have been assured that the U. S. nation in 1890 consisted of 12,690,152 families, and that each family, on an average, consisted of little less than 5 members, namely: 4.93 members.[^[18]] The distribution of the national wealth among families, therefore, was expressed as follows:

“Less than half the families in America are propertyless; nevertheless, seven-eighths of the families |HALF THE NATION.| hold but one-eighth of the national wealth,” and vice versa. “While one per cent of the families hold more (wealth) than the remaining ninety-nine,” says Dr. C. B. Spahr.[^[19]]

At last we have struck in these conclusions a piece of more serious reality. “Less than half the families in the United States are propertyless.” Here you are! “Less than half.” |CONCLUSIONS OF REALITY.| Yet even here, we are far from the fulness of truth. It seems as if the statisticians themselves were afraid to reveal the full truth to the people. And there are many intelligent persons who believe that the pure and complete truth should be known only to God Omniscient, while His creatures must be content to know but particles of truth mixed with falsehood.

As long, however, as the U. S. nation remains a democratic nation, and as long as responsibility for its prosperity or distress and disaster |RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PEOPLE.| rests upon a majority of its people, this people ought to know not particles, but the whole truth of the conditions of their existence. Otherwise the least possible minority of the sharks in human form or the wolves in sheep’s skin, may devour or ruin the greatest bulk of the people.

Let us then illustrate here one of the above conclusions, while leaving the two others for later discussion.

“Seven-eighths of the families hold but one-eighth of the national wealth,” and vice versa, as the diagrams on the following page indicate, where the 12,690,152 families represent 62,622,250 individuals as in the preceding diagrams.

Population: 12,690,152.[^[20]] Wealth: $65,037,091,197.

These diagrams represent exactly the truth of the conclusion: “Seven-eighths of the families of this nation held but one-eighth of the national wealth;[^[20]] or seven-eighths of the nation’s wealth was held by but one-eighth of the families.

The table on the next page illustrates some of the details of the above conclusion.

The upper division of that table presents the distribution of wealth among the families, where the two “per family” averages indicate |FAMILIES.| a difference in the worth of more than 11-million families that held $732 each, and the worth of little over 1½-million families that held $35,875 each. So that, each family of the latter group was worth as much as 49 families of the former. While the general average of $5,125 shows that, if the national wealth had been equally distributed among all families, every one of them would have had this average amount as its own.

The lower division of the table represents the same amounts of national wealth, the same population, only individually considered; and both the wealth and the population |INDIVIDUALS.| were divided into eight parts each, in order to carry out the proportions between numbers of the individuals and the wealth they possessed. The result in this division is that 7,827,782 individuals have had an average wealth of $7,269 each man, woman and child, and 54,794,468 individuals had but $148 worth of wealth to every head.[^[21]] The difference between the worth of one person of the one group, and one person of the other group, is $7,121 in favor of the rich person. And that, again, one person of the wealthy class, on an average, is worth more than 49 persons of the poor class.

But the most astounding fact is that we have over 54½-million inhabitants of this poverty-stricken class, and we have only a |NUMBERS NEAREST TO THE TRUE ONES.| little more than 7½-million inhabitants of the wealth-swollen class. So that, these 54½-million individuals appear to be totally dependent upon the mercies and motions of 7½-million persons who are steadily growing richer and decreasing in numbers, while the poor are growing poorer and rapidly increasing in numbers. For such has been the growth of economic slavery that the above millions have to combat with.

Besides all this, we have seen the statistical conclusion that, “Less than half the families in America are propertyless,” which certainly |THE PROPERTYLESS FAMILIES APPEAR LITTLE BETTER OFF.| means, that these propertyless families must be found included among the 54-millions of the poor. So that the present average wealth of these millions, which is $148 per every head, was made of the wealth of the upper classes, which average was not at all possessed by the poor. The economic conditions of the poor must be still worse than Table III represents them. But we shall find this out in the next chapter; while the conclusion that, “1 per cent of the families hold more wealth than the remaining 99 per cent of them,” nearly corresponds with the conclusion of Mr. Shearman, as represented on pp. [12] and [13].

CHAPTER II.
STATISTICS OF WEALTH OWNERS.

In the preceding chapter, we have dealt with ready-made conclusions of different statistical authorities, which, by the way of |RESULTS OF THE FIRST CHAPTER.| analysis, revealed to us, that 32,563,644 persons[^[22]] of the population had on an average $99 worth of wealth, according to Mr. G. Holmes; that 55,984,298 persons[^[23]] had on an average $209 worth of wealth, according to Mr. Thos. Shearman; and that 54,794,468 persons[^[24]] out of 62,622,250 inhabitants, with $65,037,091,197 worth of wealth, had on an average $148 worth of wealth apiece, according to Dr. Spahr.

These differences in conclusions indicate that the national wealth is very strongly concentrated with a few persons, and that in order |WEALTH IN THE HANDS OF FEW.| to obtain the nominal average of $148 worth of wealth to every poor person, one has to move the line of division of wealth so far up toward the wealthy few as to include nearly all the people among the masses of the poor. While, without this unfair moving of the line, more than 30-millions of the population would have no real wealth at all. For $56,907,454,798 worth of the wealth actually belongs to one-eighth of the population, or to 7,827,782 individuals, including men, women and children. And among these, we are told, “1 per cent of the population held more wealth than the remaining 99 per cent held together.”[^[25]] So that the day is not far off when these 99 per cent of the people shall absolutely depend upon the 1 per cent of the rich and far reaching.

Regarded as the Logical Premises of the life of the nation, this extremely unequal distribution of wealth cannot be other than extremely dangerous for the existence |THE SITUATION IS DANGEROUS FOR THE FUTURE.| of the nation as it is, for the logic is inexorable: Whatever you have sown, that shall you also reap, is a saying that cannot be mistaken either by the wealthy or the poor. The situation indicates that this apparently polished nation presents only an enormous working mechanism, made not of steel and iron, but a mechanism of wood, which may be broken into pieces at any future time, in consequence of any insignificant occasion, if it continues to work heedlessly on with a wrong speed against itself. A rational regulation of its speed is absolutely necessary, in order to save it from an otherwise unavoidable destruction. A civilized nation cannot live long without a highly intelligent regulation of all its working principles. For, to live a national life is not to play a childish game.

Yes, we have examined the above conclusions, but we have not realized the entire truth of the situation. For we were told that, |THE SITUATION IS WORSE THAN INDICATED.| “Less than half the families in America are propertyless,”[^[26]] which clearly means that the distribution of wealth among the people is much worse than we have a right to suppose upon the basis of the stated conclusions of 1890. As these conclusions differ from each other in contents, we have the moral right to re-examine the varying statistical tables that testify of the same distribution of wealth. And we have a right to find the naked truth in the mass of materials we have, and to look it straight in the face, if we can.

But before proceeding to compare the main tables of statistics, it will be well to show what the wealth of the nation in 1890 consisted of. Accordingly, the table on the next page represents eight items into which the wealth was classified. And it represents the summary of all kinds of wealth that was found existing in the United States in the year of the 11th census. While the next table, following it, represents the history of the accumulation of wealth, by application of the labor energy of the people upon various resources of land.

STATISTICS OF WEALTH.

“The census valuation of real and personal property in the United States (Alaska excluded) in 1890[^[27]] was prepared by J. K. Upton,” as follows:

The last historic table shows that the accumulation of wealth by the nation has been phenomenal, and equal to the expense of labor |INCREASE OF WEALTH PHENOMENAL.| energy which was embodied by the people into that wealth. And if the amount of wealth existing in 1890 had been equally distributed among the people, every man, woman and child, would have had more than $1,000 of it, or exactly $1,036 as the nominal per capita distribution of it by Mr. Carroll D. Wright indicates.

Let us, however, see the actual distribution of wealth, as it was in 1890:

It is difficult to understand why this important table has been published in round numbers almost throughout. It is, however, not at all difficult to see that it represents an extremely unequal distribution of the wealth among the American people.

And in order to restore the figures of this table so as to bring the whole into accord with the last census, it is necessary to regard the |EXTREMES TO BE EQUALIZED.| size of each family at 4.93 members, as the census represents them. In doing this, it is also necessary to restore the round numbers, supplying all omissions in the aggregate totals and in the wealth of the groups. Before giving a further explanation, then, the restored table will appear as follows:

Now, this restoring has been made up by borrowing $323,136,803 from the wealth found in the 2d group; and again by adding $37,091,197 worth of wealth which was omitted in the round numbers of the total aggregate of wealth. These two amounts, consisting of $360,228,000 in the restored table, have on the basis of the original averages been distributed among the families of the 3d and the 4th groups. So that the 3d group of families appears to be richer by $322,541,600; while the 4th group by $37,686,400; and the 2d group appears to be poorer by $323,136,803 worth of wealth. Hence, we have made the 1st R. table represent the distribution of wealth by $360,228,000 more equal than the author of the original table has actually found it to exist.[^[31]]

On the other hand, in restoring the numbers of family-members to the census average of 4.93, we |FAMILIES MADE EQUAL TO CENSUS.| add about 7 members to every 100 families of five members each, as Dr. Spahr represents them. This addition of 190,152 families to the whole renders the average-family and the total number of families in the United States exactly as they were given by the census in 1890.

But in restoring this table to the census status, we do not for a moment disregard its original value, as the most reliable work, nor do we think of making an argument, or anything of the kind, in favor of anybody, upon the ground of the surface restoration. No, there is a deeper sense and a deeper ground in the restored and the next table, and we have an abundance of other material for our purpose of showing the truth. Meanwhile, this restoring of the 1st table that had omissions, has been necessary for many reasons, and because it seemed to many thinkers as probably an extreme representation, though it was true to the facts. For these thinkers desired that the distribution of wealth should be more equal than it has really been.

And, further, holding a conservative position, it was necessary too to avoid a serious disturbance in the original averages of the family wealth found by Dr. Spahr, thus making the table comparable with another table, which is the most important one, because it indicates the tenants of farms and homes and the owners of mortgaged farms and homes.

Furthermore, the restored table may serve as a means of comparison of its classes of different worth with the corresponding classes in the following table, based upon the eleventh census facts. Accordingly, the next table represents the families of different worth which were classified upon the same economic bases as in the table of Dr. Spahr.

We have read on pp. [11] and [12] that, when Mr. Shearman made his list of statistics of wealth distribution, “that his table was based on careful estimates of the wealth of |METHODS OF RESEARCH.| the very wealthy; while the wealth of the poorer classes was estimated on the bases of assessors’ returns;” just as the table of Dr. Spahr, p. [28], which represents the very wealthy families in the 1st group, the well-to-do in the 2d, and the poor families in the 3d and 4th groups. This arrangement and representation of the families evidently agrees with that of Mr. Shearman, and proves the fact that both distinguished authorities used the same or similar methods in studying the actual distribution of wealth, and in representing their conclusions to those that were anxious to know of the distribution.

But the 2d statistical table, on the preceding page, was based upon the carefully averaged conclusions of Mr. G. K. Holmes, the U. S. Census Expert on Mortgage Statistics in 1890.

“Mr. Holmes,” as the author of the 2d table says, “follows a method contrary to that of Mr. Shearman, and by estimating the wealth of the poor, arrives at the wealth of the rich. He finds that .03 per cent of the people own 20 per cent of the wealth; 8.97 per cent of the people own 51 per cent of the wealth, and 91 per cent of the people own only 29 per cent of the wealth.[^[32]]

“The fact that Mr. Holmes is not a partisan either of conservatism or radicalism, gives to his estimates an unwonted value. As published in the Political Science Quarterly,” says the Editor of the Encyclopedia of Social Reform, “and in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, these estimates have resulted in these four groups of families seen in the 2d table, p. [32].”

We agree with Rev. W. Bliss and others in regarding the estimates of Mr. Holmes as exceedingly valuable, because without them we could neither have known the |IMPORTANCE OF HOLMES’ WORK.| number of the tenant families, nor the number of the mortgagor families, in the United States. And hence, we could not have known the seriousness of the situation in the economic conditions of the nation. While having the table based upon his estimates, the reader may, at the very slight examination of the first two groups of it, reflect and know the great danger implied in them for the nation. And it is this table that can tell the number of the propertyless families in the United States, even without regarding any further material on the subject.

But the first trouble about this table[^[34]] is, that the author of it has omitted $38,468,981[^[35]] worth of wealth from the aggregate wealth of the group 4, for the sake of roundness |FIRST DIFFICULTY.| in the great numbers, I suppose. Otherwise it is impossible to admit that the omitted wealth did not belong to anyone in the United States at the time of his making up the table. So that, restoring the $38,468,981 worth of wealth to the 4th group, we find its aggregate amounting to $48,638,468,981 worth of wealth. And it thus begins to correspond with the great masses of wealth owned by the first two groups in the 1st table, p. [28] or [29]. This omission cannot be regarded as a serious one; but, to reach a definite conclusion, we must restore it.

The second trouble in the same table, p. [32], is, that the total of families in it contains exactly 1,000,000 families more than the nation consisted of in the year 1890. For there were 12,690,152 families in the United |SECOND DIFFICULTY.| States, whereas the second table represents 13,690,152 of them, an absolutely round number having been added to some group of the families. As this table has been published since 1896, it may be that the author of it had a reason to add one million families to the 1st group, because, as the population has increased, so the families without property have also greatly increased during the seven years since 1890. And he is undoubtedly right in his calculations as to the growth of the propertyless. The statistics of 1890, also, represented an ample ground for similar calculations on the part of anyone who has studied them.

The estimates of Mr. G. Holmes, however, do not warrant the conclusion that there were 7,871,099 family-tenants of farms and homes in the United States in 1890. For, whatever degree of moderation |NOT SO MANY TENANTS.| might be in his estimates, this number of the propertyless families could not have existed at that time in the United States. For, if so many propertyless families had been in existence ten years ago, a thousand presidents at this time might lose their heads in view of the national troubles that could result from that abnormal situation of so vast an extent. The individuals that now howl about an unusual prosperity might be the indirect butchers of human flesh before they themselves are butchered. No, we drop out the surplus million families from the 1st group of the 2d table, and the table will be more correct as follows:

The conclusions in the first two groups of families of this table now appear as trustworthy as the entire conclusions of Dr. Spahr in the 1st table, p. [28] or [29]; and, that |TRUSTWORTHY CONCLUSIONS.| the first two groups, made up on the basis of Mr. Holmes’ estimates, actually surpass everything in statistical importance for this country, no one will doubt, when he has read this work. For the first group represents the tenant-families that hire their farms and homes from others, being themselves propertyless. And the second group represents families that are in debt, and that are also rapidly becoming propertyless, as we shall see in Chapter V.

The differences between the 1st and the 2d tables, however, appear very great. The 1st table shows that the national wealth is quite abnormally concentrated in a |DIFFERENCES IN THE TABLES.| comparatively few hands, represented by the first two groups. The 2d table shows that the same wealth is more equally distributed among the families of the last two groups, than is true in the 1st table. And it is the 2d table which was compiled from the estimates that by some men were regarded as extremely moderate, and, therefore, inconsistent with the real situation of the people.

It is certainly not difficult to misrepresent the whole situation even without intending to do any wrong to the nation. For the right or the wrong representation of realities |COULD BE MADE UNINTENTIONALLY.| depends very greatly upon the handling of the averages in the distribution of wealth among the people. The census facts or the assessors’ returns may be right, as well as the classifications of these facts or returns. And yet the final representations of them may be twisted, either according to the desire of the statisticians or according to the abstract rules of arithmetic. So that these rules and desires may be satisfied, but the realities may easily be obscured, and even the greatest national dangers may be concealed under an improper use of the averages.

Thus, we have seen the average of Mr. Shearman, which, including some of the well-to-do families among millions of the poor, makes these poor appear as if every |OR WITH A BIAS OF WILL.| one of them possessed $209, because Mr. Shearman’s average covered nearly 56-millions of individuals.[^[36]] While Mr. Carroll D. Wright,[^[37]] describing the problem: “Are the rich growing richer and the poor poorer?” makes a single average on the basis of the entire population. His sweeping average actually and correctly makes, not only the 56-millions of the poor of Mr. Shearman, but every pauper, every tramp, and everyone in hundreds of the lunatic and other asylums, worth $1,036 of wealth. Whereas, in reality, 1 per cent of the population held more wealth than the remaining 99, as Dr. Chas. Spahr has proved.[^[38]]

Now, something similar has taken place in the 3d group of the 2d table, where more than 3-million families are represented as the “owners of free farms and |A DEGREE OF MODERATION.| homes worth less than $5,000.” And, consequently, the difference between the 1st table and the 2d table in the wealthy groups appeared. The 2d table contradicts nearly all statistical authorities and has been spoken of as based upon extremely moderate conclusions. It is, therefore, necessary to show the degree of moderation implied in its distribution of wealth.

The fact that all families in the United States |FIRM BASIS OF CLASSIFICATION.| were classified according to their economic worth, as families worth $5,000 and over and $5,000 and under, gives us the best basis for a comparison of the two contradictory tables of the great authorities.

Let us first see the inconsistency in the groups of families which represent the middle classes in the two tables.

Now, the restored group of the middle classes of the first R. table should be absolutely in favor of diminishing the differences in the worth of the identical families and in |INCONSISTENCY POINTS TO TRUTH.| their number. Yet the two groups reciprocally exclude each other by their opposite terms. So that, the comparison shows that the greater number of families has much smaller amount of the aggregate wealth; and the lesser number of families has much larger amount of the aggregate wealth; and that the difference in family-numbers is greater than 2½-millions in favor of the group of the 1st table; and the difference in the wealth, nearly 2½-billion dollars worth is in favor of the group of the 2d table. Hence, the opposite terms of the two economically similar groups can in no way coincide with one another.

This being so, it is not difficult to find out the true situation as to the actual distribution of wealth which ought to have been represented by the 2d table. The alleged moderation of this table has |AVERAGES ARE THE CAUSES.| been brought about by the same influence of averages which we have seen in the conclusions of Mr. Shearman.[^[41]] One average of this gentleman has covered 89.4 per cent of the population, and thus made the wealth of the richest of them to be distributed among the millions of the very poor. The 89.4 per cent includes nearly 56-millions of individuals, whose aggregate wealth amounts to 18 per cent of the national wealth, and apportions $209 worth of it to every individual. But if you exclude only 20 per cent out of the 89.4 per cent of this great mass of people, selecting the wealthiest of all for the exclusion, you will thus have 69.4 per cent of the people left with less than 9 per cent of the national wealth. Your average then will be altogether different; it will cover masses of the poorest people, and every one of them will have less than $99 worth of wealth.

It is by a similar inclusion of a number of the well-to-do families among the group of “owners of free farms and homes” that the more equal distribution of wealth |SOME OF THE RICH AVERAGED WITH THE POOR.| has been obtained in the 2d table. Otherwise, this table could represent a more melancholy array of facts than the presentation of these facts which appeared in the first table. But, however bitter the truth may be, it is always better to taste it than to be ignorant of its existence, because one falsehood must create thousands of other falsehoods, and, accumulated and multiplied into a tremendous mass, these falsehoods may lead the nation to self-destruction even as many other nations were led to it.

Dividing again all families of the nation into the families worth less than $5,000, and families worth |THE SAME ECONOMIC BASES OF THE AUTHORS.| over $5,000, we shall now compare these two classes of families in both tables upon their common basis. And, as this basis presents the very bottom of statistics, the comparison therefore cannot fail to show us the very naked truth as to the actual distribution of wealth which has partly been obscured by the 2d table.

As you see, the comparison of the families of the same worth in the different tables shows that the poor classes of the 2d table are larger by 263,380 families, and richer by $7,038,394,216 worth of wealth, |DIFFERENCES REVEALED.| than they are in the first table. On the contrary, the comparison of the wealthy classes that consist of families worth $5,000 and over, shows that the 1st table is larger by 263,380 families, and richer by $7,038,394,216 worth of wealth, than the same families in the 2d table. Hence, the concentration of wealth in the first table is by $7,038,394,216 worth greater than it is in the 2d table. And it is clear that this amount of wealth is closely connected with the 263,380 families of the well-to-do classes. The question, therefore, is, Where could Dr. Spahr find so many more families worth $5,000 and over, than Mr. Holmes has found?

We know that both these great authorities dealt with the same primary facts of statistics, though Dr. Spahr dealt with them as they appeared in the Surrogate Courts, thus raising the value of the |BASAL FACTS UNALTERABLE.| facts. And we know that these facts or returns represent the worth of every family, just at it actually was at the time of the 11th census. Supposing then that the above families were represented as worth $26,723 each, could Dr. Spahr make each one of them worth $4,000 of wealth, with the purpose of including them among the millions of families worth $5,000 and under in each case? And could he thus rob the 263,380 families of their ownership of wealth, in order to make the distribution of wealth so abnormal as his table shows it? No, sir; this is an utter impossibility on anyone’s part. And Dr. Spahr represented the above families among those that were worth $5,000 and over in each case, and that is what anyone ought to have done in his place.

While in the case of the second table, the little more equal distribution of wealth appeared not because it was actually so, but because the above 263,380 families, with their $26,723 worth of wealth |UNREAL BASIS OF MORE EQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH| on the average, unintentionally or accidentally, were included among the families worth less than $5,000. Consequently, their aggregate wealth, amounting to $7,038,394,216 worth, has been nominally distributed among the group of “owners of free farms and homes worth less than $5,000” to every family. This inclusion was as easily performed as was the inclusion of the well-to-do among the poor by Mr. Shearman. We therefore subtract the above families and their wealth from the 3d group and add them to the 4th group of families worth $5,000 and over, in order to show that these families and wealth belonged to another class of the people, as follows:

Now this table represents the very essence of statistics on the distribution of wealth which was |TABLE MOST VALUABLE.| worked out by the two contradictory authorities. The 4th group of it contains the 263,380 families with their aggregate wealth, and equals the first two groups in the 1st R. table, these two and that being made of the families—each worth $5,000 and over.

It should be noticed here, that neither the 263,380 families that we have now included in the proper group of the table, nor their aggregate wealth, had anything to |GROUPS SIGNIFICANT.| do with the groups of mortgagors and tenants in the 2d table. These two groups of families have been separated from the influence of the free owners of wealth, by being debtors and tenants, who have a definite significance of their own in the statistics. And this is the reason why the subtracted families worth $5,000 and over could only be lodged in the 3d group of families worth below $5,000 under its wholesale average.

It should also be remembered that, though the 4th group of the last table represents an enormous amount of wealth, yet there are hundreds of thousands of families in it which are worth but few dollars |THE WEALTHY ONLY FEW.| over $5,000 worth of wealth. So that, the real concentration of that enormous amount of wealth remains in the possession of less than half a million families, as these facts have been represented by Mr. Shearman and the others in the first chapter. And nothing can be said against the accuracy of the careful estimates of the wealth of the very wealthy by Mr. Shearman and the other authorities.

In order to have a more definite idea of the distribution of wealth, let us compare both tables on one page, and remember that if the group wealth were equally divided among the group-families, each family could have such amount of it as the averages indicate. And mind that the next two tables, being based upon the same census facts, represent the results of careful comparison of the original ones.

It should be noticed again, that the differences in the family averages of the corresponding groups of the two tables, depend on the differences in the |AVERAGES OF FAMILIES’ WORTH DIFFER.| numbers and in the aggregate wealth of the same groups of the tables. And these differences could not be avoided, since the two authorities have made a different classification of the families of different worth.

But the comparative importance of the two tables consists in the fact, that the last group of the 1st table shows the extremely abnormal concentration of wealth in |THE RICH AND THE POOR GROUPS.| the hands of 126,750 families, which possess more wealth than the remaining 12,563,402 families do, on the one hand. While, on the other hand, the first group of the 2d table shows that there have been 6,871,099 families without real property; and the second group shows, that there were 1,483,356 families in debt and in danger of losing their properties, and that both these groups of families have been in the state of economic slavery to the wealthy few. But we shall examine their conditions of existence later on.

GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND GERMANY.

“The distribution of private property in Great Britain and Ireland in 1891,” was such that it was said “that less than 2 per cent of the families of the United Kingdom |THE PROPERTYLESS IN BRITAIN.| hold about three times as much private property as all the remainder, and that 93 per cent of the people hold less than 8 per cent of the accumulated wealth. There remains, therefore, nearly 6,000,000 families”—i. e., 30,000,000 individuals—“or more than three-fourths of the people of Great Britain and Ireland, without any registered property whatever. They have indeed their household goods, but the total value of these can hardly exceed £100,000,000,”[^[44]] which is little over $16 to every individual.

“The ownership of land is an important factor in the social condition of a people,” says Mayo Smith.[^[45]] And “if we contrast the |DISTRIBUTION OF LAND IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND.| peasant proprietorship system of France, with more than 4,500,000 owners of land, with the landlord system of England, with its 325,000 owners, the social as well as the economic influence must be very different”[^[45]] in the two nations. Certainly the French people feel and enjoy economic freedom, while the British people are pressed down by an economic slavery.

In fact, the statisticians seem to agree that the distribution of wealth, even in Paris, the capital of France, and in Berlin, the capital of Germany, is proportionally much more equal than it is in the nation of Great Britain or in that of the United States, although it is natural that the largest cities, as a rule, have the distribution of wealth much worse than the nations behind them.

ILLUSTRATIVE CHART.
Every block here represents a comparative average wealth of one man, woman, or child of the respective groups in the 2d Corrected Table, p. [51]; while the figures above show the numbers of individuals owning one block each, as indicated.

While the thirty millions of British people have on the average $16 worth of wealth, the American people of the same class have somewhat more of this kind of wealth than the British, as the last table, individually regarded, shows the average property of every person of the families. It is as follows.

The average of $83 worth of personal property in the 1st group of individuals here is a little too large, because, subtracting the surplus million families from this group,[^[46]] we have left the wealth |THE POOREST CLASSES, 1890.| of it untouched. In any way, this group contains 27,117,000 individuals having on the average $30 worth of property each, according to the last group of families in the table of Dr. Spahr.[^[47]] It does not, however, make a great difference on the whole, because the group of tenants, since 1890, has undoubtedly increased up to 38,837,849 without having been able to add anything more to its aggregate wealth.

The increase of the propertyless accrues from the natural increase of the population, and from the loss of the mortgaged properties |CAUSES OF THE INCREASE OF THE PROPERTYLESS| by foreclosure of the mortgages in the 2d group, and from the immigration of the propertyless foreigners[^[48]] without special means; while the people of the 3d group have sunk by thousands into debt from having mortgaged their properties; and only about a million families of the last two groups have been exceedingly prosperous, as we shall understand the situation later on.

CHAPTER III.
PROPERTIED AND PROPERTYLESS PEOPLE.

The statistical authorities told us that “Less than half the families in the United States are propertyless,”[^[49]] and we desire to know the chances for, and resources of, their living; and what it means to be a propertied person or to be a propertyless person upon earth.

Let us see the clear distinction between the |CONDITIONS OF LIFE OF THE PROPERTIED AND PROPERTYLESS.| state of a property owner and the state of a propertyless person; between the conditions of life of the former, and the conditions of life of the latter, and how both are affected by and related to these conditions.

First of all an owner of property and a propertyless person, are, on an average, perfectly equal in that they have physical strength, and in that they have equal rights to use or to apply that strength somewhere |EQUAL IN PHYSICAL STRENGTH.| upon the wealth of an owner of wealth. And here we meet the first difference between them: An owner of property has a chance to apply, and to spend his strength upon his own property; if, for instance, this property is land that gives him any kind of returns in exchange for his |THE ONE HAS, THE OTHER HAS NO CHANCE.| labor and toil. The propertyless person has neither this chance nor this right to toil anywhere, unless he pays for the opportunity of using his strength, by dividing the results of his labor between himself and the owner of wealth who permits him to draw some income from the resources of his own property or wealth. So far, the advantage of the propertied person is such that he has twice as much right in his strength, and twice as much chance to profitably use his personal strength.

Now, every one knows that whatever the wealth of a nation may be, it is primarily derived from land which is the only inexhaustible source of riches, or, of derived wealth. And when a person gets |LAND PRIME ORIGIN OF WEALTH.| into his possession a portion of land, whether it will be in a city, town, or in the country, he then obtains a number of resources for his life; he becomes a propertied man, and he can apply his strength, his skill or his intellect upon his own property and thus reap the fruits of his labor. The land then is the first store of wealth; but it almost never yields anything to man, unless he labors, works upon it, with a hoe, a plough, a scythe or some other implement that aids him to draw greater returns from his land. Again, if iron, for instance, is primarily derived from land, then |LAND MAIN FACTOR OF WEALTH.| when it comes to the forge, where the hammer, the anvil and the other tools aid the blacksmith to make an ax out of the rough iron, the ax will be of a greater value than the material he used for it. But what really made the ax is his personal strength and the skill that were aided by the tools he used. These tools with the blacksmith, and those implements with the farmer are economically called |SKILL SECOND FACTOR OF WEALTH.| “capital,” because they aid to draw more wealth by the labor of man. It follows, that land is the main factor of wealth; that human energy or labor is the next factor of wealth; and that capital, as aiding labor and land to produce more wealth than they can yield without it, is the third factor of wealth. Money is not regarded as direct capital here.

As capital is a very important source of income to a propertied man, and as it is perhaps not clearly understood by all, let me illustrate this factor of wealth by introducing more examples of it.

Capital from an economic standpoint is that wealth which produces farther wealth, or simply aids to create farther wealth. A needle is capital, because it aids to |CAPITAL THIRD FACTOR OF WEALTH.| make a shirt that costs more than the material used for it. A sewing machine is capital of more effective kind than the needle used by hand, because it aids to produce more wealth than the tailor or the seamstress can produce without it. A lathe is capital, because it not only shapes the round forms of any material more accurately than |MACHINERY, TOOLS, ARTIFICIAL WEALTH.| the artizan would ever be able to make without it, but it greatly saves his time on every piece of the work; thus saving time it aids in producing more wealth. A factory, as a whole (including the building and machinery), is capital, because all the machinery, all tools and instruments used in it produce farther wealth from the raw materials, and serve as sources of income to the owner of this property. Under the care of the stock-raiser, cattle are capital, because they grow and multiply; but the meat or beef is utility, because it may be unproductively consumed.[^[50]] Agricultural implements, as well as the fertilizers, like guano, phosphates and many others are capital, because they increase fertility and increase the produce of land, which makes a greater income in favor of its owner. A thousand different machineries and special instruments might be introduced here to show that each one of them has been invented for the purpose of aiding to create more wealth out of less wealth. And that all of them and every one, when used by an owner of wealth, is a definite source of income and of profit to him, because it aids his own skill and energy to obtain greater returns in exchange for his labor and mind, than he can obtain without it.

But the most effective factor in aiding to produce more wealth and a much greater income for an owner of wealth is the energy of steam or any other mechanical force, applicable to various forms of labor |MECHANICAL FORCE; INCREASE OF STEAM.| and completely obedient to the bidding of man. “Steam power has increased in the United States from 3½-millions, in 1860, to 17-millions horse power in 1895; while in Great Britain and Ireland it has increased from 2½- to 13-millions; Germany from ⅞- to 7⅔-millions, and in France from 1 to 5-millions horse-power. The increase of this capital has been most manifest in manufactures,” says Dr. Henderson.[^[51]] But it should be remarked at once that no one of the families worth below $5,000 could apply these millions of horsepower of steam force upon their properties. This energy has all the time been a profitable source of great income in favor of the families that made the wealthiest group in the tables of statistics, whereas the others have had but little crumbs of its increase of wealth. The mechanical force, as every one knows, is in service of the capitalists.

But when we look into the limits of towns and cities, we find millions of rentable properties of all possible kinds; and every factory, |SOURCES OF INCOME.| every storehouse, every shop and every dwelling house there is a sure source of income to the propertied man. The very sweat-shops, where the working people can not, on an average, live longer than 28 years—even these dens of poison and pestilence are inexhaustible sources of income and profit to their owners.

As to the town and city lots, they are all sources of greater or less income to the men who own them. Whether these lots of land are occupied by |SOURCES OF INDIRECT INCOME.| anything or are remaining waste, makes little difference, because as the town population increases, their values also increase in proportion as the city population and its business increase; the owners of properties towards centers of the cities are usually bound to be rich out of the resources of rent. Even a simple house, somewhere about the marginal line of a city or town is usually a source of indirect income to its owner, because he and his family may have a comfortable shelter in it, without which they would pay the rent for another’s house,[^[52]] and would carry on all other expenses of life, just as they do in their own house, in which they save the rental money for some other purposes of living.

Now then, whatever property you may think of—whether natural or artificial, whether animate or inanimate, that a person has possession of—it is always wealth, and a source of income in his favor. |WEALTH CREATED BY LABOR.| The natural wealth is the land, wherever it may be in convenient places, it may always provide one or more resources of income in exchange for the application and expense of strength or skill of labor upon it. The artificial wealth includes all capital, whatever it may be, it is capital, if it can assist the labor energy to double, triple or multiple the income and profit, drawn from the natural resource to which the labor-strength is applied. The rentable house or any other building is artificial wealth. And it is also a source of income to its owner who, by a use of skill and by an application of labor energy, can make his source of income give a multiple yield, in return for the expense of his personal strength upon it.

Thus, the indirect and direct resources of a propertied person, therefore, are always many and complete when he works out the wealth himself. |COMPLETE AND INCOMPLETE INCOMES OF PROPERTY OWNERS.| By complete I mean this, that whatever his intelligence and strength can draw out of the source they are applied to, it is always his and is always to his benefit. An incomplete income or yield from a source of wealth, to its owner, will be this, that, if he hires the energy, or the skill of another person to apply upon his property, then his income is incomplete, because he has to pay for the hired labor energy as well as for hired skill. In this way an owner of wealth of any kind may even divide the yield and the product of the source of income into halves.

But as long as a person is an owner of wealth, an owner of capital, and an owner of physical and mental energy, he is a possessor of |PROPERTY GUARANTY OF LIFE.| resources; his labor energy and his existence are then fully guaranteed for himself, his wife, and children by his wealth, because wealth or property becomes a direct source of income, when he himself labors on it, and an indirect, when he rents it to others. A propertied man, therefore, is safe forever by the resources of his property, which yield incomes and profits for sustenance of the highest possible life, highest education, freedom, and enjoyment.

But what about the propertyless man? How many resources, or how many sources of income |HAS THE PROPERTYLESS ANY SOURCE OF INCOME, ETC.?| has he for his own life, the life of his wife and children? What sources of income has he for education, for bread and butter, for clothes and dress, for their shelter and his own? What resources has he for his sustenance in this world, when the entire world tends rapidly to be the property of a very few persons?

He has neither land, nor capital, nor house; he has neither natural, nor artificial wealth to serve him, and hence, has not a single one of the above described sources of |THE PROPERTYLESS HIMSELF IS A SOURCE OF MULTIPLE EXPENSE.| income and profit which the Creator provided for man’s enjoyment. On the contrary, the propertyless man himself is a source of multiple expense; he has but a store of labor energy within himself, which store must be supported by its own effort, and that too while his life is guaranteed by nothing but by his physical strength and natural mind. And it is only these two that unite to support him who is the single source of the following manifold expenses in favor of many owners of properties and wealth, who sometimes make enormous fortunes by the efforts of the propertyless.

If a propertyless man desires to exist at all in the sight of his God in this quasi-civilized world, he must spend his life in the following ways:

1. He must pay from it for a shelter to one or another property owner, when this owner has a rentable house, which house serves as a source of income and profit to the owner. So that the tenant of his house becomes a permanent resource for the owner’s well-being, because he cannot avoid paying rent to the one or the other.

2. He must pay for his clothes to another property owner or an owner of wealth, who gets income and profit from selling the |EXPENSES FOR CLOTHES, ETC.| goods, and who gets incomes and profits for making and producing the goods. And as a consumer, the propertyless man is relied upon as a source of income by these owners of wealth, and hence, he is a resource of their own well-being. He must also pay for laundry to another owner of wealth and must be a real source of income and profit for him, because he too is a propertied man and has many resources for life.

3. He must pay for his board, whether in a boarding house or in a restaurant, it makes some difference; but by boarding in either |EXPENSES FOR NOURISHMENT.| one or the other, he must be a source of income and profit to servants and waiters every day, and to a crowd of owners of wealth who are ever ready to draw all from him they can. But if he boards in the house he rents, and if his wife performs the domestic duties in his case, then the expense of his life is reduced through this channel in favor of the wife. Nevertheless, he must continue to be a source of income in favor of the butcher, the baker and grocer, and some other propertied men who derive their profits from him at a certain per cent in the way of his nourishment.

4. The propertyless man is another source of expense in favor of the support of the general government of the nation, a state government, a county government, and perhaps a municipal one. And he |EXPENSES FOR GOVERNMENT, ETC.| pays the taxes in the prices of the goods and clothing he wears; in the prices of food and the drinks he consumes,—these expenses make him a sure source of income to many other owners of wealth, and so on. And to this channel of drain must be added his expenses for education, for different asylums, for churches and other institutions; expenses for the books and newspapers he reads; expenses for the carfare, etc., he cannot avoid; expenses for the physicians he is cured by, and the drugs his strength is invigorated with, and so on. Thus every one of these propertied persons obtains his own percentage of income from the resourceless man. And certainly there are many other channels of expense for him in the society he comes into contact with. It is really impossible to number here even the unavoidable expenses of the propertyless man.

It is then in the above directions that the physical and mental energy must run out of the propertyless person. And of course it runs out in the form of currency or the money by which he pays for shelter, for clothing, etc., for services |HIS ENERGY IS DRAINED BY THE PROPERTIED MEN.| and all utilities, to the owners of wealth. But, if the propertyless man himself is only a source to be drained by the others, and if he has neither land, nor capital, nor any other natural or artificial wealth to draw an income from, then his very strength is good for nothing. For the strength itself can neither be eaten nor can he pay with it any one who has the right to draw on it. His energy must, therefore, be first exchanged either for money or for some other utilities of value which are derived out of wealth, out of property that he does not possess. How then can this persistently drained source become filled or supplied again? Where is the resource of his own income? Surely he can not exist without one at least. And, being propertyless, he naturally does not have even the single one outside of himself. Yet he has to live from without or he must die of starvation from within.

Now, the only chance for the propertyless man to live is to go again to an owner of wealth, and to hire some one or another resource |HE MAY HAVE BUT ONE CHANCE FOR A PAYMENT.| of income from him and to apply his energy to it, paying for the permission. Again paying, paying is the only hope for the propertyless man. And this is the most important point after all, because he must pay even for the application of his personal energy to all natural and artificial resources of wealth, or income. Has any one understood what it means—to pay for an application of labor energy to wealth that the merciful Creator provided for man? I am sure that the politico-economists do not understand it. A few of them hit this point, sometimes, but unconsciously, without conceiving its significance.

The propertyless person, then, who is drained in all directions, and who has but one chance to restore his expended energy from a single source of income—this man again becomes an additional source of expense in favor of an owner of wealth, an additional source of income and profit to propertied men.

But where, and how, can this unfortunate creature of God, this multiple source of income and profit for men, further pay and expend his strength, for becoming a still further source of income in favor of the propertied men?

This question, after the four previously explained series of drains of the propertyless man, demands the next point.

5. The propertyless man can not even make himself the source of income and profit to others without paying an exorbitant price for it to an owner of wealth. If, for instance, he labors for wages, his employer and others finally obtain from 25 to 50 or 75 per cent or even more profit out of the results of his labor. If he works on a farm, in a plant, or any other wealth |HIS EXPENSES FOR EMPLOYMENT IN ANY SPHERE.| with capital, or works in making capital, he must in any way divide the results of his work between the owner of wealth and himself. His portion is usually paid by time in money, as wages, as a salary, or in some other way; while the whole result of his work remains, and is dispensed by the owner of wealth who is profited by him. If the propertyless person serves to an owner of wealth as a clerk, a bookkeeper, salesman, or in any other capacity, he cannot serve unless he or she is a profitable source of income to the propertied master who gives him the chance to supply his ever drained source of multiple expenses. If, further, the propertyless man leases a farm or any other wealth of a propertied person, he has always to divide the results of his labor between himself and the owner of wealth. Whereas, if the owner of it himself labors on his wealth, then, the whole result of his toil must remain as a reward to himself. And there is the difference: The tenant or the lessee is obliged to labor twice as hard as the propertied man in order to derive so much income for himself, as the owner of wealth can derive by working half as hard; and that is because the owner of property is drawing all income of his labor for himself, while the propertyless man is drawing income for himself and for the propertied man, to whom the former is a source of income by paying rent. If, finally, the propertyless man labors upon a rentable source of income, and then borrows money for improvements, in addition to the paying for that source, he thereby makes himself a source of income in favor of the creditor, by paying per cents for the loan; and, consequently, he must divide the results of his toil between himself and between two owners of wealth. The improvements, being a capital, must aid him to produce more wealth than he can produce without it; but the high rate of percentage which exists in America must surely ruin the debtor, because per cents in favor of lenders of money, etc., generally run from 6 to 12 per cent per annum; and in some cases the money sharks obtain even from 15 to 18 per cent.

What then are the advantages of the propertied person and the disadvantages of the propertyless man?

From the preceding it is clearly seen that both men are on an equality merely in the physical energy. And the propertied person has an absolute advantage for developing his mental energy or skill. We |ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES.| have, therefore, to regard their physical energy as an equal in both. But, with the propertied man, this energy is surrounded by multiple resources of income; so that to whatever resource he applies his energy, it always yields him the whole results of his labor. An application of capital in his power multiplies the yield in his favor. An application of the hired labor energy still farther multiplies the yield and increases his income. His |A PROPERTIED IS A MAN OF MULTIPLE INCOMES.| physical energy, therefore, must be regarded as a source of multiple income even in relation to a small amount of wealth or income-bearing property.[^[53]] On the contrary, when there is plenty of employment, the energy of the propertyless person is itself a source of multiple expense in favor of the propertied men. And again, |A PROPERTYLESS IS A MAN OF MULTIPLE EXPENSES.| when there is employment, he is permitted to apply his energy but to a single resource of income; and when permitted to do so, the propertyless man can only draw about half the income that this resource can yield to his energy, while the other half of it must go to the multiple incomes of the propertied men who employ him as the people call it. Hence, being surrounded with the inexhaustible wealth of nature, with innumerable resources of income, the propertyless man is only a semi-sourced man—a man of semi-sourced income. He is a man who is entitled to a portion of the yield, for the expense of energy which is equal to two or more portions of it. And there is nothing more in the whole realm of wealth than a semi-income from one source for the man who himself is a source of multiple expenses in the favor of many owners of wealth. A greater injustice than this could not be fabricated by mankind under the heavens.

But what about the propertyless, when there is no employment at all? Or, when the caprice of the propertied is not satisfied by the halves of the yields produced by the |PROPERTYLESS OUT OF EMPLOYMENT.| labor energy and skill of the propertyless people? What, when they demand still more impossible efficiency in product from the emaciated energy of their victims? The answer is clear and but one. These economic slaves, these victims of the greatest injustice and absurdity are thrown back by thousands into the sphere of humiliation under public relief. And who constitutes this public? Nearly all the same propertyless millions, who relieve the others, when they themselves are not yet on the point of starvation.

And who is after all accused? Who is searched? Whose character and history of life is mercilessly scrutinized at the bars of charity? |HE IS REGARDED AS INFERIOR.| Again the same propertyless victims, the same economic slaves, whose lives have been spent in working for the owners of wealth, owners of property, of fortunes.

It is certainly not with Japan, nor even civilized England, where primogeniture persists to reign, and where the hereditary noblemen |PRINCIPLES OF INJUSTICE.| equally continue to suck the energy of the British and Irish people and of the peoples of their colonies that we have to deal with. “In 1891 Great Britain and Ireland had had nearly 6,000,000 propertyless families[^[54]];” and they have been accustomed for centuries to spend more than half of their energy in favor of the lords of property, who are the lords of nearly all resources of wealth in Britain and in many other parts of the world. But we have to deal with the people of the United States, whose fathers tried by all means to escape the influence of primogeniture, and whose children have now reached the same economic |DIVIDOGENESURE.| condition of slavery, but under a different title, viz., that of dividogenesure.[^[55]] As its definition here shows, the principle of dividogenesure involves both the individual and class dependence of the needy upon the wealthy and applies to the entire millions of the group of tenant families, as well as to the group of mortgagor families of the 2d table.[^[56]] For all these families have been dividing the sole results of their labor or toil, in one way or another, between themselves and their economic masters that they wholly or partly depend upon. The subsequent chapters, however, will better explain the situation of their dependence.

While here we shall but briefly indicate that dividogenesure, as a principle of tacit reality, separates the people into two classes: 1st, into individuals of multiple expenditure in each case, but with a possible semi-income |ECONOMIC CLASSES.| for supplying this expenditure; and 2d, into individuals of also multiple expenditure for living, but at the same time of multiple incomes sufficient to leave a considerable net profit or balance for their future. This balance or profit, in some cases, gradually amounts to millions of dollars’ worth of wealth, remultiplying further incomes most rapidly; while the individuals of the first class become absolutely dependent upon the second even for the semi-income which may at any time be refused them on account of too many individuals in need of resources for incomes belonging to the second class.

And it further follows, that when the resourceless are admitted into the sphere of dividogenesure, |ONE SPHERE.| then their multiple expenditure is meagerly supplied. But when they are refused admittance into this sphere, then their unavoidable fate is starvation or falling back into the realm of public relief for the unemployed.

As to their fate under the public relief, Dr. Amos G. Warner says: “The most difficult |CHARITIES ANOTHER SPHERE.| problem in the whole realm of poor-relief is this of Providing for the unemployed. England has worked at it intermittently from the time of Elizabeth” (1558-1603) up to date without success. For there were more than 30-millions of individuals without property in Great Britain and Ireland, when Dr. Warner was writing, and he continued as follows:

“The most careful investigation made in this country regarding enforced idleness was probably that conducted by the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor during the |LOSS OF TIME.| depression of 1885. There were during that year in Massachusetts 816,470 persons engaged in gainful occupations; of these 241,589 were unemployed during part of the year. The time lost, if we consider only the principal occupation of each individual, was 82,744 years; but many persons, when unable to work at their principal occupation, had some subsidiary work. Making the proper deductions for the time thus put in, the net absolute loss of working-time amounted to 78,717.76 years. * * * Averaged among those who lost a certain amount of time, the loss per man was 3.91 months.”[^[57]] or nearly four months.

This description shows the absolute helplessness of the resourceless people in the State of Massachusetts alone, while there were 48 other States and Territories besides Massachusetts in this country. In |LOSS OF MONEY.| all these States and Territories, therefore, not only millions of years of working-time must have been lost during the depression of 1882 to 1885, but millions of dollars of public and private money was unproductively spent for the relief of the propertyless from starvation, cold and from other distresses. And after all, that was a comparatively mild reality. For the same Dr. Warner further writes:

“This present chapter passes from my hand in March, 1894, when special relief-work for the unemployed is being carried forward on a scale never before known or |HOMELESS CONSTANT FACTOR.| needed in this country.[^[58]] It is therefore not possible to give the results of this emergency work.” * * * But the relief must be given. “The present chapter is concerned especially with the problem of the homeless poor as a constant factor in the administration of charities.[^[59]] The question of how to deal with the tramp is said to be of special urgency in every locality in the United States with which I am at all acquainted. From Boston to San Francisco, and from St. Paul to New Orleans, complaints come of a number of tramps, which is alleged to be ‘especially’ large in each case.”[^[60]]

In fact, Dr. Warner’s book of more than 400 pages is one that represents the saddest spectacle |TWO SISTERS OF INIQUITY.| of human misery on the largest scale. It treats all possible causes of the misery, excepting the main, and all-powerful, cause of all the minor causes, which I have named dividogenesure, because it is the sister of primogeniture, the one being as iniquitous for millions of families as the other.

As a universally pernicious principle, dividogenesure is always working in behalf of a few favorites. It has always been unjust to the employees, even when those |IMPLIES DEGREES OF INJUSTICE.| favorites commanded an equal number of places of employment to the number of the employees in a nation, because the latter have always been obliged to divide the results of their toil at an unjust rate of per cent with the former. The injustice of dividogenesure, however, intensifies as soon as the number of the employees becomes greater than the number of the places of employment, and this injustice grows especially intense when these employees appear to be the propertyless individuals. And when a nation has so many propertyless individuals as to outnumber by millions the places of employment, then, the great injustice of dividogenesure changes into the very foundation of iniquity. For its favorites, then, make all possible devices, like the blanks with tens of scrutinizing questions, and other humiliating devices for the purpose of selecting the most efficient applicants for employment at the cheapest possible rates of payment. Thus, the employed ones become harder and harder economic slaves of these favorites, while the unemployed are cast out of the sphere of the slavery without bread, etc., into the sphere of starvation and the public relief.

Further, dividogenesure is not a system of ordinary slavery, where the slaves are dependent upon their masters for living and dying. It is not the slavery that imposes a moral obligation upon the masters |IT IS NOT AN ORDINARY SLAVERY.| in favor of the slaves who are subject to them. No, no, dividogenesure has made millions of families absolutely dependent on its favorites, but it has removed from these favorites all moral obligations in favor of the modern economic slaves. The modern master of hundreds of the slaves can extort the last inch of labor energy from each of them, and yet can live in perfect peace under the shield of dividogenesure without responsibility and without the slightest remorse of conscience. He does not compel any of the slaves to make applications for employment, for working out his wealth and fortune. But he knows very well that there are invisible, omnipotent and omnipresent forces, |UNSEEN FORCES.| namely: Hunger and thirst, or the multiple expenditure in every individual case, which mightily push the slaves to his commanding mastership. And the only duty dividogenesure bids him to perform, is to choose the most efficient applicants for the lowest pay, as they would seem to be the most profitable for himself. As to the rejected ones, it is neither his business nor his duty to care whether they live or perish by fire, by cold, by disease, wither away or starve to death.

CHAPTER IV.
ABNORMITY OF THE SOCIAL SITUATION.

The preceding chapter has shown the differences between the conditions of life of the propertied |DIFFERENCES IN CONDITIONS OF LIFE.| and of the propertyless people. It has explained the multiple expenditures of the resourceless, and how they are obliged to labor under the principle of dividogenesure without ever being able to appropriate the full results of their labor to themselves. The present chapter will reveal the astonishing number of the propertyless in the United States, and the places where they are mostly to be found.

However, before proceeding to examine the investigations about the people without property, we must add here, that the propertyless |THE PROPERTYLESS PAY RENT OR ARE EXPELLED.| are those that occupy houses, or rooms, or simply little cells in the rentable properties of the propertied, paying rent for them. They are, therefore, regarded as the tenants of homes, and when occupying rentable farms, they are regarded as the tenants of farms. And as long as they are able to earn and to pay the rents on time, they are regarded as good people, good families and respectable persons, because they constitute the real sources of income to the owners of the rentable properties. But as soon as they cannot find a situation, cannot find employment, cannot find work, cannot find a job, cannot borrow money, cannot pawn anything, hence cannot pay rent at the well defined times, then they are gently or ruthlessly kicked out of the rooms, and regarded as “no good,” as degenerates.

Expelling them from the tenement houses or farms, some gentlemen or lady-proprietors sometimes even express sympathy or |CANNOT HELP THE SITUATION.| sorrow to lose their tenants; and sometimes they anticipate further sufferings and privations for their unfortunate roomers, etc., but cannot help them under the existing conditions. The expelled tenant then wanders about, suffers privations, humiliations, till he falls into prison, or she falls into prostitution, and into all the miseries of the world. And it is only at the point where these propertyless lose their real manhood and womanhood that they cease to be the sources of income for the propertied.

Now let us deal with the homeless and landless in the statistical accounts, where the tenants and mortgagors are described together, but with greater details in respect to the mortgagors than to the tenants. For the sake of clearness, therefore, I must prominently represent here the tenant families, as the propertyless, and must leave the mortgagor families for the next chapter.

The following census statistics represent only percentages of families occupying farms and homes in the United States, while I have supplied the figures implied in the relative percentages of these families.

STATISTICS OF THE TENANTS.

“Extra Bulletin No. 98 of the United States Census, 1890, says:

“There are 12,690,152 families in the United States, and of these families 52.20 per cent,” or 6,624,259 families, “hire their farms or homes, and 47.80 per cent own them.”[^[61]]

“In regard to the families occupying farms the |FARM FAMILIES.| conclusion is, that 34.08 per cent,” or 1,624,655 families, “hire, and 65.92[^[62]] per cent own, the farms cultivated by them.” So that “among every 100 farm families 34 hire their farms,” being landless.

“The corresponding facts for the families occupying |HOME FAMILIES.| homes are, that 63.10 per cent,” i. e., 4,999,396 families “hire, and 36.90[^[62]] per cent,” i. e., 2,923,560,[^[62]] families, “own their homes.” So that “in every 100 home families, on the average, 63 hire their homes, and 37[^[63]] own them.”

“There are 420 cities and towns that have a population of 8,000 to 100,000, and in these cities |CITIES 64.004 PER CENT. HIRE.| and towns 64.04 per cent of the home-families hire and 35.96[^[63]] per cent own their homes.” So that in these cities and towns, 64 out of every 100 families hire their homes, and 36 own them, or as the Bulletin states: “in 100 home families, on the average, are found 64 that hire their homes, and 36[^[63]] own them.”

Besides this, “the cities that have a population of 100,000 and over,” i. e., cities up to millions, like Philadelphia, Chicago, New |LARGE CITIES 77.17 PER CENT. HIRE.| York and so on, “number 28, and in these cities 77.17 per cent of the home families hire their homes and 22.83[^[63]] per cent own them.” It follows, that in these large and very populous cities of the United States more than 77 families out of every 100 are tenant families or those that hire their homes, and 23[^[63]] own them. Or, as the Bulletin says: “In these cities among 100 home families, on the average, 77 hire and 23[^[63]] own their homes.”[^[64]]

Now then, what this Extra Bulletin reveals to us is as follows:

1. That in 1890 we had 1,624,655 families hiring farms. The difference between hiring a farm and owning a farm is this, that an owner of a farm reaps all the benefits |NUMBER OF FAMILIES HIRING FARMS.| of his own farm; whatever amount of energy he spends upon his farm, he obtains all the results of it by himself and for himself, remaining all the time an independent man. A farm tenant is just the contrary. He is a dependent being and is a subject to dividogenesure. He works upon a rentable property and must first of all satisfy the rightful owner of the farm. He must divide the results of his labor between his master and himself, by paying rent. And in order to be equally well off with the farmer that works upon his own farm, the tenant must exert almost twice as much of labor energy as the owner of a farm. But this is impossible. And this impossibility rests upon all the tenants of farms. They are economic slaves of their masters, slaves under the principle of dividogenesure. If they don’t wish to divide the sole results of their labor, then they must starve, and there is no other alternative for them, because they are propertyless and hence resourceless.

2. That at the same time we had 4,999,412 other families that were hiring not the farms but rentable homes of the propertied men. And these nearly |NUMBER OF FAMILIES HIRING HOMES.| 5-million families were not only the sources of income and profit in favor of the owners of the homes, but also the sources of income for the employers that permit them to labor. So that a farm tenant is a direct[^[65]] source of income to one lord of property; while a home tenant is a direct[^[66]] source of income for two owners of wealth. And a great injustice hangs on the neck of every one of these millions, because they have no property of their own. But the principal point is this, that neither one of them has the right to expend or apply his labor energy anywhere without paying for it to those that may not labor at all and live.

Adding now the two classes of tenant families, we have 6,624,259 of them; and regarding their |NUMBERS COMBINED.| numbers individually, we have 32,656,808 propertyless persons who are in bondage of dividogenesure, because they have neither the right to expend their strength nor to restore it without paying for both to the propertied.

The question now is, Do these numbers show that we had “less than half the families in the United States without property?”[^[67]] Even without examining the numbers of the propertyless in cities and towns, the Extra Bulletin proves that there were 279,023 more of the propertyless families than the half of the entire population. And |COULD BUILD A LARGE CITY.| this little more than the half represents 1,345,683 propertyless individuals who could build and could inhabit yet another one of the largest cities in the world, while under the unjust principle of dividogenesure they have neither a farm, nor a lot, nor a single house of their own.

But what do you think about the whole number of the propertyless? We had fully 32,656,808 individuals of them in 1890, according to this Bulletin, and they could |COULD BUILD 32 LARGE CITIES.| likewise build and inhabit 32 great cities having in each more than a million of good citizens. A million population in one city, as you know, constitutes one of the most populous cities in the world; and we could have thirty-two such cities in the possession of these now propertyless people. These millions of people could make one of the finest nations on earth with 32 of most populous cities which they could erect by their labor energy. How is it, then, that they are obliged to remain homeless, landless, propertyless, resourceless? Have they been lazy to work? Have they been incapable of doing anything for themselves? Have they been degenerates? No, no, these tens of millions have been working hard, but they have been deprived of the results of their labor by the unjust principle of dividogenesure that compelled them to labor for the few families of the wealthy group of the two tables on p. [47], which own the results of their labor and toil.

And do you realize what it means to have 420 cities and towns with the population of 8,000 to 100,000 individuals in each? Do you know what |CITIES BUILT BY LABORERS.| it means to have nearly seven-tenths of their population without property, when they cannot exist without it? And what it means to have 28 cities whose population is above 100,000, and which goes up to millions in some of them; and yet nearly four-fifths of their people are without homes, without property, and without any resources of their own? And do you know that these very cities (and towns) have almost all been built out of the realized labor energy or on account of the results of labor of these slaves of dividogenesure?

And this is not all, for, according to the Bulletin, we had 32,656,808 of the propertyless individuals, while the 2d R. table, p. [36], |COULD BUILD 33 GREAT CITIES.| which resulted from the 2d table on p. [32], and which was published in 1897—this table authoritatively demands that we should add 1,251,469 more propertyless people to the number found in the Bulletin. This additional number of the propertyless could make yet another one of the most populous cities in the world. And, being added together, these people could inhabit not 32 but 33 cities, with the total population of 33,908,277 individuals or nearly 34-millions of souls.

Imagine! The whole nation in 1865 was made |WHOLE NATION OF 1865 PROPERTYLESS IN 1890.| up of this number of people, whose wealth aggregated over $24,000,000,000 worth. Now the principle of dividogenesure required but 25 years to render the |BY INCREASING PROPERTY MEN LOST PROPERTY.| number of the propertyless equal to the entire nation of 1865. Is it not an astonishing fact that while this great number of the propertyless people grew up, the national wealth actually increased by the worth of about $41,877,475,129? For in 1860 the total aggregate of it was $16,159,616,068, whereas in 1890 it aggregated to $65,037,091,197 worth of wealth.

In view of these contrasting facts, can any one say that the 33-millions of the property-losers were idle? or that the phenomenal increase of the wealth was produced |HUMAN ENERGY IS THE INITIAL OPERATOR IN PRODUCTION.| by the very few owners of it because they had the most effective capital at their own hands? No, sir, the capital itself is dead in every respect and form, and not a single piece of it can produce anything by itself. But, being effective aid, assistant in production, capital only helps the living human energy to increase the results of its labor. And it follows that whatever the increase in production due to mechanical forces or to other capital may be, it must be attributed to the activity of human energy which manipulates all invented forms of capital. And surely the blessings of the various inventions consist in the fact that the inventions can aid the labor energy to produce more wealth than it can produce without them. Hence the real blessings of the invented capital ought to have been preëminently in the fact of its increasing the well-being of the millions of laborers in the various grades of industry.

How is it, then, that the wealth of the United States nation, from 1865 to 1890, increased by more than 42-billion dollars worth, |IS IT LOGICALLY CORRECT OR MORALLY RIGHT?| while the well-being of its producers greatly decreased? How is it that the tens of millions of the workers not only could not obtain the due share of the wealth they increased, but many millions of them in addition lost their own properties? How is it that the great blessings of the inventors have been changed into great curses against their well-being, because now they appeared to be absolutely dependent for life on the wealthy few, having nothing of their own? No explanations of minor causes can answer these questions, but the great injustice of dividogenesure explains them.

But what can the propertyless people do when they increase and when all the wealth and capital produced by the people are monopolized by a few families, as even the 1st and 2d tables, p. [47], show the facts? What can the 33,908,277 individuals without property do, when they have nothing to hope for but labor under the principle of dividogenesure for the wealthy few that consist of less than a million families in the enlarged nation?

It is evident that their fate condemns them to labor, as slaves, on permission, and to satisfy first the demands of dividogenesure and afterward take |THE CLAIMS OF DIVIDOGENESURE REGARDED FIRST.| for themselves what may be allowed from the results of their toil on the rentable farms, while the millions of families which hire homes in the 448 cities and towns are still harder slaves of dividogenesure than the families that hire their farms. They are harder slaves because they are more liable to be freed even from the oppression of dividogenesure, and liable to remain months and months in the sphere of starvation without employment.

Can there be a greater iniquity in the world than the iniquity that proceeds from the abnormal system of dividogenesure?

No! No nation in human history has seen an iniquity that can be compared with the results of dividogenesure as they are at present, for it now deprives men of their |DIVIDOGENESURE IS A FOUNTAIN OF GREAT EVILS.| fruits of toil to the utmost degree; it deprives them of their energy, of their rights, and of their property; it deceives them by the medium of exchange of commodities and products; it makes them economic slaves of the very few masters or throws them out of the region of the slavery into the region of resourceless starvation and degeneration; it concentrates masses of the people’s wealth into a few hands, leaving millions of families without income in despair and casts them out of the rentable homes; it drags them into the courts, throws them into prisons, drives them into penitentiaries, fits them for and chases them into the lunatic and insane asylums. And not only this, but nearly all causes of murders, of parricides, of infanticides, etc., and of the suicides perpetrated by the people, can indirectly be traced to the abnormal system of dividogenesure, which most fundamentally conditions almost all national, social and private crimes, because sound life always depends upon sound economic basis of a nation.

The system of dividogenesure, however, is pernicious not only to the tens of millions of the propertyless people alone, but it has |IT COMPRISES THE PROPERTIED EMPLOYEES.| enslaved millions of families that have homes and have other little properties not bearing direct incomes for subsistence. These families therefore are also compelled to be in gainful pursuits under the same conditions with the landless and homeless. And Mr. Carroll D. Wright, onesided and severely criticised, wrote about some of them as the American bread-winners, as follows:

“Bread-winners in 1870 engaged in supporting themselves were 12,505,923, or 32.43 per cent” of the population. “The bread-winners in 1880 were 17,392,099, or 34.67 per cent of the total population” of that time. “The bread-winners in 1890 were 22,735,661, or 36.31 per cent.” By “bread-winners” he meant “wage earners, salary receivers ... or any one who was engaged in gainful pursuit,” including “proprietors of whatever grade or description, and all professional persons.”[^[68]]

I must here make a diversion to examine this author’s argument.

For the purpose of proving that the poor, the producers of wealth, were getting better off from 1870 to 1890 by their gainful pursuits, Mr. Wright has placed in the |MR. C. D. WRIGHT.| same class individuals of incomparable description, and, by making averages upon equally incomparable basis of their gains, logically arrived at the false conclusion that the wages in general had risen during that period of time. And hence, he added that “the rich are growing richer and the poor are getting better off.” He thus arrived at the same nominal conclusion at which Mr. Shearman has arrived in making nearly 56-millions of individuals appear to be in possession of $209 each.[^[69]] And it is exactly in the same way Mr. Wright himself made the per capita wealth in the United States, as a whole, amount to $1,036 for every inhabitant of the nation. The rules of arithmetic are accurate in every calculation. But the nominal distribution of wealth has never made the millions of the people better off; and it has never altered the fact, that in 1890 we had nearly 34-millions of them without property; and we had a little over 7-millions of other individuals owning more than 55½-billion dollars worth of wealth.[^[70]] Whereas, at the same time, there were more than 27-millions of individuals whose aggregate wealth was only $825-millions, which is but $30 to each person.[^[71]]

This little diversion from our main thought once more testifies that the increase of the 42-billion dollars worth of wealth which accrued from 1865 to 1890 did not in the least raise the wages of those producers of the wealth who were compelled even to lose their own properties. On the contrary, while the salaries and incomes of some professional persons had decidedly increased, the wages in general had fallen, as we shall see later on. Consequently, the tens of millions of the creators of that wealth appeared to be all the worse off, as we have seen on pp. [85], [86].

And when Mr. Wright adds “that the transportation has been so perfected,” during the same time, “as to bring to the door of the |THE PROPERTYLESS HAVE NEITHER DOOR NOR WINDOW.| poor man and the rich the results of industry of far away people” in order that they may buy them from different monopolists; this sentence really sounds like a mockery to the 34-millions of individuals who had in 1890 neither their own door nor even window, and who were absolutely dependent upon chances for a semi-income under the oppressive dividogenesure.

But as to how many people were engaged in the gainful pursuits and how many of them were entirely subject to the system of dividogenesure, we can better know from the researches of Prof. Mayo Smith. He says as follows:

“Persons in gainful pursuits, United States 1890, by classes of occupations, in ten years of age and over, were 47,413,559. Out of them |PROF. MAYO SMITH.| 24,352,659 were males and 23,060,900 were females.” After this statement he innumerates their respective occupations and adds “That 9,013,201 persons were in gainful pursuits in agriculture, fisheries and mining, and that 8,333,692 of these last are males and 679,509 are females.”[^[72]] So that out of 62,622,250 inhabitants of the country 47,413,559 individuals of 10 years of age and upwards were engaged in the gainful pursuits.

Now these nearly 47½-millions of persons in gainful pursuits could not all be the slaves of dividogenesure. For some of these |FAVORITES OF DIVIDOGENESURE SPECULATE.| persons serve its favorites for very high salaries and their services are well remunerated. Nor could this number include many of the favorites of this unjust principle. For its real favorites are those that possess extensive rights in natural and artificial resources of wealth; they are those that earn their enormous incomes even in their comfortable beds, by simply speculating on and relying upon the energy and productivity of the subjects to dividogenesure. And as the productivity of the American people is very high, it therefore becomes as easy for them to grow very wealthy under the favor of dividogenesure as for the millions of makers of their fortunes to grow very poor and emaciated.

Reviewing then the various occupations of the people in the United States as these are represented by different authorities, we |1,000,000 FAMILIES AND 38,837,849 INDIVIDUALS.| have sufficient reason to judge that since the year 1890 there have been about 38,837,849 persons who may be regarded as positive slaves to dividogenesure on the one hand. And there have been about one million families that were more or less profited by their highly productive labor and skillful energy on the other hand. The above number includes nearly all the homeless and landless of the last census, and includes about six millions of those who had their little homes and other properties of no importance.

The productivity of these people may be exemplified by the following reports:

“Mr. Mulhall, in the ‘North American Review,’ for June, 1895, says:

“An ordinary farm-hand in the United States raises as much grain as three in England, four in France, five in Germany, or six in |PRODUCTIVITY OF FARMERS.| Austria, which shows what an enormous waste of labor occurs in Europe, because farmers are not possessed of the same mechanical appliances as in the United States.” (Enc. of Soc. Ref. p. 1093.)

“Mr. Edward Atkinson gives the following statements on the industrial productivity of the United States.” He says:

“One thousand barrels of flour, the annual ration of 1,000 people, can be placed in the city of New York from a point 1,700 or |7 PERSONS SERVE 1,000 WITH BREAD.| 2,000 miles distant with the exertion of human labor equivalent to that of only four men, working one year in producing, milling and moving the wheat. It can then be baked and distributed by the work of three more persons, so that seven persons serve 1,000 with bread.”[^[73]]

“The average crop of wheat in the United States and Canada would give one person in every 20 of the population of the globe a |ENOUGH TO FEED THE WORLD.| barrel of flour in each year, with enough to spare for seed. The land capable of producing wheat is not occupied to anything like one-twentieth of its extent. We can raise grain enough on a small part of territory of the United States to feed the world.”[^[74]]

“The general conclusion at which I have arrived is that in the year 1880, the census year, |GROSS INCOME IN YEAR 1880.| when the population of the United States numbered a little over 50,000,000, the annual product had a value of nearly, or quite $10,000,000,000 at points of final consumption, including, at market prices, that portion which was consumed upon the farm, but which was never sold. Omitting that consumed upon the farm, it was about $9,000,000,000.”[^[75]]

“At an average of 200 pounds per head in the United States, the largest consumption of iron of |ONE OPERATOR SERVES HUNDREDS WITH GOODS.| any nation, we may yet find that the equivalent of one man’s work for one year, divided between the coal-mine, the iron-mine and the iron-furnace, suffices for the supply of 500 persons. One operator in the cotton factory makes cloth for 250; in the woolen factory for 300; one modern cobbler (who is anything but a cobbler), working in a boot or shoe factory, furnishes 1,000 men or more than 1,000 women with all the boots and shoes they require for a year.”[^[76]]

These paragraphs sufficiently indicate the general capability of the American people for production under the existing conditions.

If an Austrian wine-producer or a farmer is six times less capable to produce than an American farmer; and if this Austrian farmer |POVERTY IS IMPOSSIBLE.| can easily defray the multiple expenses of his family and his own out of the results of his less capable labor and live comfortably every year, the American farmer ought to have five times as much of net profit from the results of his capable labor energy as the Austrian farmer can spend every year for his living. So that, living in the same way as the Austrian, the American farmer ought to be in six years fully thirty times wealthier than an Austrian farmer of an ordinary type.

How is it then that the wealth of the sturdy American farm tenant consists on the average of but $360 per family of nearly five members each; while an Austrian farmer is incomparably better off, being almost always a propertied man?

And if seven American laborers are able to serve 1,000 persons with bread and feed themselves every year, it is perfectly legitimate, then, that every one of them should have a yearly profit of his labor, which is equal to the value of bread, yearly consumed by nearly 143 men. And this yearly profit must quickly make a considerable amount of wealth in his store.

How is it then that the millions of American producers of bread, each supplying hundreds of |POVERTY EXISTS.| persons, are obliged to live from hand to mouth, having neither property nor land, nor any other wealth in store for their future? And if their productivity testifies that they are able to feed and clothe the world, as Mr. Atkinson very reasonably affirms, is it not highly important to find out who profits by their remarkably efficient labor energy? Or, who yearly devours the surplus of their products, leaving them in poverty?

Further, the work of one American miner, “for one year, divided between the coal-mine, the iron-mine and the iron-furnace,” ultimately |NO ROOM FOR POVERTY.| “suffices for the supply of 500 persons” with the metallic goods and utilities they consume in a year. “One operator in the cotton factory can provide goods for 250, in the woolen factory for 300, in a boot or shoe factory for 1,000 men or more than 1,000 women”—one worker in any of these industries, in one year, can work out the respective goods these numbers of consumers require for a year, thus showing that the productivity of every operator is simply phenomenal.

How is it then that these very operators who can and do supply hundreds and even thousands of consumers with different utilities |YET POVERTY EXISTS IN THE ABSENCE OF JUSTICE, ETC.| for living and enjoying, are unable to support their own families for six months after they cease to be in their exceedingly productive employment? And why are nearly all of them homeless? Is it the essential and necessary demand of modern ethics, that the more one produces the poorer one must be? Or is it exactly the demand of modern justice that millions of human beings should only toil and work for others, without having the right to work for themselves and to partake of the fruits of their own labor? And where is the court of justice to be found which can vindicate their cause in view of their unusual productivity?

Many consumers are convinced that these operators as well as all other American laborers are always paid what they deserve, though they cannot provide for |ILL-BASED REASONING.| their future. Many other consumers think that they could not be so productive if it were not for the highly efficient aid of costly capital under their operations. And as a logical inference, these consumers further think that this capital must be highly paid for its own productivity. Hence the capitalist must have a lion’s share from the results of the active energy of every operator with the mechanical forces in production. And, although the error of such reasoning is transparent from beginning to end, yet it seems that justice itself is thus often satisfied.

These reasoners seem to never ask, Whose energy is embodied in the capital that the inventors have |JUSTICE CLAIMS A DEEPER BASIS FOR REASONING.| left as great blessing for working humanity? And whose energy has realized, or rather materialized, the existing inventions after they had been created in the minds of the great men? Has all this been done by inanimate dollars or money, or by the same animate and intelligent beings whom we now regard as the mere operators in every sphere of human activity? Is it not their energy that flows like a river into all things of utility?

Then they say that the organizers, the managers, the superintendents must be paid manifold for their superior work and intelligence. All right, nobody denies that.

But will you show me a single article in use, in existence, or an object in the process toward use and existence, which does not represent the energy |THE WHOLE ARTISTIC WORLD IMPLIES EXPENDED HUMAN ENERGY.| of the laborers in need of some of the necessaries of mere existence? Show me a brick or a stone in its use, an iron-bar, a steel-rail, a machine or an engine, a steamer or cable, or whatever you please, which has not been washed with the sweat of the brow of their makers in need? Show me that building, that palace or mansion, a house or home, which does not directly imply, or does not testify of the energy of the propertied poor and the homeless?

Or show me that article, a heavy stone in a structure, a lump of iron or coal, a coin of silver or gold, or show me anything in the world, which should prove to have been only stained with the sweat of the brow of a mere speculator in motions of values, in rentable farms and homes, or in products of the workers in need? I am sure you cannot.

While as facts I can show that the crystallized energy of the homeless, the poor and the landless, in possession of others, floats on the rivers, the seas and the oceans; it |IT HAS NOT BEEN JUSTLY PAID FOR.| fills up the land, builds up the towns and cities, heats them in winter, lights them at night. In possession of others, their energy is sold on the markets, and is laid in the stores and the banks of others. Further, their energy stands in the forms of the plants and the factories working in speed throughout the country; and it burns in the stoves, in the furnace of the various works; it steams in the boilers and moves the machines of its own making; and it pulls on the cables and the cars upon the roads made by its muscle and bone. It crystallizes in goods and all objects of use; it then moves on in masses upon the lines of rails, and runs on from cities to cities, obeying speculators’ commands. So, having been shaped into millions of different forms, and having escaped from the working hands of its genuine owners, the energy quickly changes into more and more durable forms; and after several motions, it finally rests in the clean hands of the speculators, as if it were their righteous net profit and wealth.

Even this picture indicates the true basis where one should look for justice and rights, for losses and profits.

“The profits of the Wall street kings the past year were enormous,” says Dr. Josiah Strong,[^[77]] about January, 1880. “It is estimated that one of them made $30,000,000; another, $15,000,000; two, $10,000,000 each; one, $8,000,000; and four, from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 each; making a grand total for 10 or 12 estates of about $80,000,000”[^[77]] in one year.

While “Mr. F. C. Waite, special agent of the Eleventh Census, in charge of True Wealth, makes the following statement as to the gross and net earnings of important natural monopolies for the census year 1890.”[^[78]]

Now, these totals show what an enormous amount of the people’s crystallized energy accrues to the monopolists in one year, and in every year, besides covering all yearly expenses. No wonder, then, why we find that the highly productive people, of which Mr. Atkinson speaks and which could even in 1880 put upon the market, “at final points of consumption,” the annual surplus of $9,000,000,000 worth of various kinds of products, appeared in 1890 to be in possession of only about $10,000,000,000 worth of aggregate wealth, belonging to more than 55-millions of individuals. Whereas, on the other side, there appeared less than 7½-millions of individuals in possession of more than $55,000,000,000 worth of wealth.[^[81]]

It is certainly understood that all products, while reaching the “points of final consumption,” rise in their value, on account of the enormous earnings derived from them by the speculators in the products of human energy, while they move these products by the cheapest possible labor of millions of employees, under the principle of dividogenesure. The rising of their value is, of course, inevitable from beginning to end. For as the raw materials, or the products of any kind, continue to acquire their consumable state in the hands of the operators, more and more energy is being spent upon them or added to them. And it is just and meet that the persons who thus add their energy to the products should be paid for it, whether engaged in the factory, in the plant, in transportation or in the final distribution among consumers.

Yet what do we find? We find that the 38,837,849[^[82]] slaves of dividogenesure, who work in the whole field of production and distribution, are losing a great amount |THEY LABOR FOR LESS THAN THE DUE.| of their energy in favor of about one million[^[82]] families that employ them for less payment than these families finally derive from the results of the labor energy of these employees. By “less payment” I mean that net profit which is called the undue concentration of the producers’ wealth in the employer’s hands; and I mean what is absolutely due to the laborers and not what is undue. The facts of the undue concentration of wealth in the hands of these few families will be shown in chapter VI.

If we now regard one million families of the wealthy group of one of the tables[^[83]] as the employers |THE RATES OF INCOMES.| of the 38,837,849 propertyless and the propertied poor, the daily injustice of the million families will be expressed in their daily incomes from every individual as follows:

So that, if only 20c is obtained from each of the propertyless and the propertied poor in any employment whatever, then every one of the million families on the average gets daily more than $7 of the unjust income. And that is simply because the resourceless people cannot apply their energy anywhere without oppression. But, if the principle of dividogenesure allows these families to squeeze out of every one’s energy daily 25c, then the daily dividend of these families will amount to $9,709,462.25, which is nearly $10 to each family among the million. And this is one way how the rich are growing richer and the poor are growing poorer. While the next chapter will show another way of getting rich and the poor.

No one ought to suppose, however, that the million families, variously employing the above number of the absolutely dependent people, obtain equal shares of the |THE LOSSES AND PROFITS ARE UNEQUAL.| unearned profits from the workers in the United States. Nor ought one to suppose that these workers lose equal amounts of energy in favor of the owners of capital, means of transportation, or distribution of products, in favor of landlords and houselords, etc. No, some of the workers lose more than others, just as some of the families get much more than others. The net profits of the different monopolies, p. [101], as represented by the census agent, illustrate these differences in the gains of several families connected with the monopolies.

But, notwithstanding the differences in the detailed gains and losses, there cannot be any doubt or discrepancy in the general fact, that if “the natural” and other[^[84]] “monopolies” shall continue to earn billions of dollars worth of wealth every year, all the nation will soon be absolutely enslaved by a very few families of the wealthiest type. The economic slavery of the nation then will grow harder and harder upon the people absolutely dependent on the principle of dividogenesure.

For if each one of the 38,837,849 individuals now daily loses, on the average, 25c worth of wealth produced by his energy, the continual |DEPENDENT INDIVIDUALS.| increase of these dependents must bring about a continual increase in the rates of the daily incomes in favor of the wealthy few—at the rates shown on p. [104], which shall then go higher up. The concentration of wealth will go on, and from the standpoint of dividogenesure, these rates will indicate a continual increase or decrease in the unjust concentration of wealth in a few hands.

No one must suppose, however, that by the rates of dividogenesure we mean only the underrated wages and salaries. No, we mean here the losses of the people in all stages of productive and distributive activity and the final gains of those that unjustly profit by this general activity of the people. And I view the nation as a whole with its future.

If the situation be left, as it is at present, many possibilities can unmistakably be predicted for the nation’s future.

When the nation is rapidly growing into the economic slaves of a few favorites of dividogenesure, there is no use to think about the freedom and political power of |POSSIBLE FUTURE.| the enslaved people, because such thinking or talking will only be a general mock-flattery against the helpless by the ignorant or dishonest men who may also be slaves over the slaves. And this modern dependence of the people will certainly be to their own harm. The tens of millions of families together shall neither be able to support the public schools, colleges, churches, nor any other public institutions without the means of the wealthy few. Then it will be that the very teachers, professors, ministers and every one else in the public service will also be in bondage. Then it will be that they shall be bound to educate the people by so shaping their nervous system as to bear even greater economic slavery than any savages could tolerate. Then it will be that they shall be unable to teach any truth valuable for the well-being of the people even if they know it perfectly well.[^[85]] And then it will be that every one shall feel his impotency and littleness in attempting to throw off the heavy yoke of the few rich families.

Besides, we may see here a type of the Venetian Republic with all its inherent miseries, on a large scale; while the people shall continue to groan even as the Venetians did |VENETIAN REPUBLIC.| under a few prosperous families. But the American groaning and misery may undoubtedly be even greater than theirs, because they were oppressed and labored as beasts of burden, but they were never compelled to work on a par with the modern mechanical forces. And as the misery of the American Republic will be greater, the oppression heavier, and the economic and other forms of slavery will be more degrading, it will be necessary to have a greater Napoleon Bonaparte in order to liberate the future Americans from their oligarchic plutocracy than the one who spoke to the Venetians: “I am your liberator; I am not your enemy; I am your friend; don’t be afraid,” and so on.

It is, however, to be hoped that the present American fathers will not hesitate to provide something better for their children.

CHAPTER V.
MORTGAGOR FAMILIES.

It must be borne in mind that in this chapter we have to consider only those families of the nation which were in possession of real or artificial[^[86]] property before and after the year 1890. And we have especially to consider those of them whose properties were mortgaged; and those whose properties were to be lost in consequence of the mortgages they were encumbered with. While the propertyless or the tenant families, that were treated in the preceding chapter, will now be kept in the background of the statistics with which we have to deal.

When, however, we are through with the statistics, we may make references to and may even make special statements about the tenant families treated before; while the prominent position will now be given to the mortgagor families, showing how they fall from the class of property owners, become debtors to the owners of greater wealth, lose their properties and increase the numbers of the propertyless.

It is important to note here that the loss of the rights to property always precedes the actual loss of property itself; and that the fall of the propertied into the sphere of dividogenesure, also precedes the actual economic slavery of those that become propertyless.

The very day in which a propertied person mortgages his property he loses his rights for the wealth he has owned, because his property goes from him as a security |LOSS OF RIGHTS PRECEDES LOSS OF PROPERTY.| for the loan he makes. And while losing the rights, he takes upon himself the obligation to divide the results of his labor between the lender and himself, and thus falls under the influence of dividogenesure. For, henceforth, he spends his active energy in favor of the creditor and himself, and is obliged to regard the interests of the creditor as of more importance than his own. The rate of interest to the creditor must be accurately paid so much per cent per annum for the loan. Hence, the mortgagor at once appears in the position of a tenant of farm or of any other property. And it depends on the rate of the percentage he agreed to pay out of the results of his labor whether he is better off or worse even than a mere tenant. It also depends on the fact whether his mortgaged property is a large one or small, and whether he has mortgaged one part or the whole of his resources of wealth. In any way, a mortgagor, according to the degree of his indebtedness, is an economic slave of the owners of greater wealth. And he must have a supernatural ability and must use an extraordinary effort in order to pay his debt or to redeem his property. Otherwise his property must pass into the absolute ownership of the wealthy families that millions of other individuals already labor for under the modern type of slavery.

But let us now see the statistical facts and then we may better judge of what mortgages signify and what they mean to the nation. We shall take the other class treated in the same bulletin out of which we extracted the 6,624,259 tenant families for the preceding chapter.[^[87]]

STATISTICS.[^[88]]

“Extra Bulletin No. 98 of the United States Census, 1890,” (of the mortgagor families) “says:”

That out of the whole 4,767,179[^[89]] farming families in the United States only “65.92 per cent,” or 3,142,414 families “own the farms |FARM FAMILIES IN DEBT.| cultivated by them.” And “that 28.22 per cent,” or 886,839 families out of the 3,142,414 owning ones, “own subject to encumbrance,” i. e., they are in debt; “and 71.78 per cent,” or 2,255,575 families, “own free of encumbrance.” So that among every 100 farm owning families 72[^[90]] own without encumbrance and 28 own with encumbrance.

And the same Bulletin further says: That “on the owned farms there are liens[^[91]] amounting to $1,085,995,960, which is 35.55 per cent of the value of the encumbered |DEBT AT 7.07 PER CENT.| farms, and this debt bears interest at the average rate of 7.07 per cent,” which is more than 7 dollars for every $100 borrowed. It is at this rate per annum that the farmer’s labor energy is drained by the wealthy creditors or by the bankers. “Each owned and encumbered farm on the average is worth $3,444.” This average, of course, includes the families far above $3,444 worth and far below it—“and” each, on the average, “is subject to a debt of $1,224.”

Hence it follows that the principle of dividogenesure, in these cases, has a yearly demand that every debtor should, on the average, pay about $86.53 worth of the results |INTEREST.| of his labor energy to his creditor. And it is a question whether even a highly effective capital worth $1,224 is really able to increase the yearly results of the debtor’s labor to the extent of $86.53—I mean an increase in his product absolutely due to the aid of the borrowed capital on which he is to pay this sum as the annual interest charge. It is rather probable that the majority of the mortgagors pay more than half of this annual percentage at the expense of their personal energy, even under the condition of the most effective use of the borrowed means. For the rate of 7.07 per cent is unconscientiously exorbitant and is generally abnormal.

As to the families owning homes, the corresponding facts are “that 27.70[^[92]] per cent,” or 809,831 families, out of the 2,923,577 home-owning families, “own their |HOME FAMILIES IN DEBT.| homes with encumbrance, and 72.30 per cent,” or 2,113,746, “own them without encumbrance.” So that in every 100 home-owning families 28 are in debt and 72 are free of debt. “The debt on owned homes aggregates $1,046,953,603, or 39.77 per |DEBT AT 6.23 PER CENT.| cent of the value of the encumbered homes, and bears interest at the average rate of 6.23 per cent. An average debt of $1,293 encumbers each home, which has an average value of $3,250.” This average again includes the family homes worth far above and far below the indicated value. While the homes below this value may have greater encumbrances than the others; and it is certainly the poorer families that lose their properties first, if they attempt to get rich by means of the loans they can obtain at the rate of exorbitant per cents.

If then the average debt of these 809,831 families is $1,293 and the rate per cent for it is 6.23 per cent per annum, every one of them |AVERAGE OF INTEREST.| is, therefore, a subject to the principle of dividogenesure at the rate of $80.55 a year. It must, however, he understood that the averages indicate only the general truth, and always conceal the particular miseries and distress of many millions of the people. And I understand that many of these debtors have been in the gainful pursuits spoken of by Mayo-Smith, and hence the dividogenesure presses upon them from two or even more sides. But it is only the next census that will show us the situation these debtors are in.

Let us now speak about the cities and towns with one side of which we have become acquainted in the preceding chapter.

CITIES AND TOWNS.

“There are 420 cities and towns that have a population of 8,000 to 100,000, and in these “cities |OWNERS OF THE CITIES FOUND AMONG 414,544 FAMILIES.| and towns 64.04 per cent,” i. e., 1,120,433 “of the home families hire and 35.96 per cent,” i. e., 629,146 families “own their homes, and of the home-owning families 34.11 per cent,” i. e., 214,602 “own with encumbrance and 65.89 per cent,” i. e., 414,544 “own free of encumbrance. The liens on the owned homes are 39.55 per cent of the value of those subject to lien. Several averages show that the rate of interest is 6.29 per cent; value of each owned and encumbered home is $3,447; lien on the same is $1,363.” (See Appendix I.)

So that these debtors of the 420 towns and cities are also subject to the principle of dividogenesure at the rate of $85.73 each per every year, as long as the mortgages remain in force and are not foreclosed.

“The cities that have a population of 100,000 and over” (up to millions) “number 28, and in these cities 77.17 per cent,” i. e., |OWNERS OF THE LARGE CITIES FOUND AMONG 276,744 FAMILIES.| 1,503,911 “of the home families hire and 22.83 per cent,” i. e., 444,923 “own their homes; 37.80 per cent,” i. e., 168,179 of the latter families have encumbrance and 62.20 per cent,” i. e., 276,744 families are free of encumbrance. Averages for owned and encumbered homes are: Encumbrance, $2,337; value, $5,555; rate of interest, 5.75 per cent. Homes are encumbered for 42.07 per cent of their value.” This is the largest average encumbrance among all encumbered homes and farms.

So that every debtor in these 28 large cities (and there are 9 of them in every 100) is a subject to the principle of dividogenesure at the rate of $134.37 each in every year as long as the mortgage is in force and is not foreclosed. It is after the foreclosure that the debtor cannot even redeem his mortgaged property; he has then to remain propertyless. Let us now sum up the preceding conclusions in a tabular way, as follows:

This double table shows clearly enough that there were 8,320,831 tenant and mortgagor families that have been subject to the principle of dividogenesure. And |SUBJECT TO DIVIDOGENESURE.| that these families had 41,061,563 individual members, including children that have now grown up to the same fate of the drain of labor energy, under which their unfortunate parents have been. For all these individuals, of course, cannot exist without working in favor of the few money lenders and propertied men, because the tenants have no resources to apply their energy to, and the mortgagors cannot profit themselves by the loans of exorbitantly high per cent of interest. Hence, they are all drained and all are economic slaves of the wealthy few.

Besides, the necessary life-expenses of every one, subject to a strong dividogenesure,[^[94]] are absolutely greater than the same expenses of any one in the wealthy group. While the incomes of the rich that the millions of other individuals and the forces of capital work out, cannot even be compared with the semi-incomes of the poor that are obliged in any way to work for the wealthy, when these are disposed to give them a chance to work.

Further, is it not an abnormal reality that the 420 towns and cities in the United States should belong |CITIES OWNED BY LESS THAN 24 PER CENT OF THEIR PEOPLE.| to less than 24 per cent of the entire population in them? And is it not strange that the remaining 76 per cent of the inhabitants in these cities and towns should live and labor with the purpose of feeding, fattening and enriching these 24 per cents of the people who are really the owners of these towns and cities? And is it not abnormal in the extreme to have 28 cities, populated by hundreds of thousands and by millions of individuals; and that these |CITIES OWNED BY LESS THAN 14 PER CENT OF THEIR PEOPLE.| cities, including all kinds of buildings, machines, houses, etc., etc., should actually be possessed by less than 14 per cent of their population? And that, in addition to this extreme abnormity, the remaining 86 per cent of their people should be obliged to divide all results of active and creative energy with these few owners of the great cities?

But what is inconceivably strange is that this extremely abnormal situation should be produced in a nation governed by the people’s representatives chosen by their good will and purpose; and that this will and purpose should bring about the results of so great injustice and wickedness against this people, is only possible on the basis of ignorance, neglect of duty and selfishness.

Let us now have an idea of the progress of development of the principle of dividogenesure in the United States, and of the rapidity with which the people fall under its oppressive influence, thus gradually becoming propertyless or the absolutely helpless economic slaves of those that capture them within the extensive nets of that principle.

“Extra Census Bulletin No. 71 gives the statistics on mortgages by amounts, length of mortgage, rate of interest for the United States from 1880 to 1889.”

It says: “That during that time 9,517,747 real estate mortgages, stating amount of debt incurred, were made in the United States, representing |INCREASE OF MORTGAGES.| an incurred indebtedness of $12,094,877,793. The number of mortgages made during one year[^[95]] increased from 643,143 in 1880 to 1,226,323 in 1889, or 90.88 per cent, and the yearly incurred indebtedness increased from $710,888,504 in 1880 to $1,752,568,274 in 1889, or 146.53 per cent.”

“With regard to mortgages on acre-tracts, the number made during 10 years was 4,747,078, representing an incurred indebtedness |ACRE-TRACTS.| of $4,896,771,112.” The increase in making them was as follows: “The number of these mortgages made in” the year “1880 was 370,984; in 1889, 525,094.” So that during the years between these “an increase of 41.54 per cent” was made; “while the incurred indebtedness increased from $342,566,477 in 1880 to $585,729,719 in 1889, an increase of 70.98 per cent.