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.