The impending crisis

by Basil A. Bouroff

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.