“In 41 States 28.86 per cent of the taxed acres are covered by mortgages in force. The largest proportion of mortgaged acres is in Kansas, where 60.32 per cent of the total number of taxed acres are mortgaged. Nebraska stands next, with 54.73 per cent; South Dakota third, with 51.76 per cent.[[99]]
“In the five States, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Carolina, 23.99 per cent of the taxed lots are covered by mortgages in force,”[[99]] and so on in the other States. But the most important fact is the annual interest the people have to pay to the wealthy few for their loans.
AVERAGE RATE PER CENT ON THE
DEBT.
“The average rate for all mortgages in the United States is 6.60 per cent. For mortgages on acres,” the average is “7.36 per cent; for mortgage |U. S. RATE PER CENT.| on lots, 6.16 per cent. These rates make the annual interest charge on the existing real estate mortgage in the United States amount to $397,442,792.”[[100]]
Now we have reached the principle point in these statistics. Imagine that the families in debt are annually charged with the rate of interest amounting to $397,442,792 |INTEREST CHARGE.| worth of the results of their labor, and that the group of creditors get this amount of wealth yearly without work. And think that, if the average life of a mortgage is even 4½ years long, these families have to pay $1,788,492,564 worth of wealth produced by their energy during this time. But we were told that the average length of a mortgage life continues “as much longer without being paid off,” that is, it lasts nearly 10 years, and these families have, therefore, to pay nearly $4,000,000,000 worth of the wealth produced by them during this time. That is how the debtors are affected by the principle of dividogenesure which steadily works in all directions in favor of the wealthy few. This is the economic slavery that the Nineteenth Century has established for the people of the United States.
The Bulletin shows that this interest charge is for mortgages on acre-tracts and on lots, against which the debt of $6,010,670,985 was in force in 1890, after which it continued to exist and to increase probably with the same rate as it increased in the previous decade. For, nothing special has been done to prevent the needy people from mortgaging their properties. So the mortgages were increasing and the annual interest charge against lots and acres, too, continued to increase.
But the Extra Bulletin No. 98 shows that the indebtedness on owned farms was equal to $1,085,995,960,[[101]] and the same on owned homes was equal to $1,046,953,603;[[102]] |INTEREST CHARGE ON FARMS AND HOMES.| so that, added together, these two classes of debt amount to $2,132,949,563, as was stated in this Bulletin. And the average rate of interest on this debt is shown at the end of the second Bulletin to have been 6.65 per cent per annum. And “the annual interest charge is $141,910,106”[[103]] that has been a burden on 1,696,670 families represented here in the table, p. [116]. Of course, thousands of these families have now lost their properties forever, as there were liens on their farms and homes representing the above total of more than 2-billion dollars.
If we now unite the annual interest charge on |COMBINED INTEREST CHARGE.| the acres and lots mortgage debt, and the annual interest on farms and homes mortgage debt, we find that these charges amount to $539,352,898 in every year, which must be paid in any way.
It is certainly not the yearly charge of the memorial past, but it was stated as existing in the year 1890, and would naturally continue as an annual interest charge up to the present day. The debtors must use an extraordinary effort in their toil, in order to get sufficient results from their applied energy for clearing up this annual interest charge, and keeping themselves alive.[[104]] And to speak about an unusual prosperity of the people under such conditions is as absurd as to say that the creditors are growing poor from receiving the annual interest charge consisting of $539,352,898 worth of wealth because they get it yearly without work.
Yes, every one that speaks about prosperity in the United States knows what he means. For the statistical facts prove that there is an unusual prosperity for the very few that the tens of millions of individuals are bound to work for. But, is it prosperity for these millions of the propertyless * * * and debtors? No, there is positive enslavement for them and their children. And it is the innocent children or posterity that are to be specially pitied.