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: