But do not flatter yourself by thinking that this is only the fate of Michigan. No, the people’s economic conditions are more or less similar in all the States and Territories, and some States are much worse off than Michigan, as the statistics show their situation.
Mr. D. R. Goodloe, in the “Forum” for November, 1890 (not knowing yet the facts of the East), says:
“The conclusion from this melancholy array of facts is irresistible. The virgin soil of the West is rapidly ceasing to be the home and |A CURSE OF HUMANITY.| the possession of the sturdy American freeman. He is but a tenant at will, or a dependent upon the tender mercies of soulless corporations and of absentee landlords. We have abolished monarchy, and primogeniture, and church establishments supported by the State, yet the universal curse of humanity, the monopoly of the earth by the wealthy few, remains.” * * *
And I can tell Mr. Goodloe that these few have monopolized, not only the earth of the country, but also the hundreds of cities and towns, together with their buildings, their capital, their natural and artificial wealth, their houses, etc., etc., and the tens of millions of the inhabitants of these towns and cities too, have been economically enslaved, under the system of dividogenesure, to the same wealthy few.
CHAPTER VI.
CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH IN MONOPOLIES,
ETC.
The first and the second chapters have revealed to us that, since the year 1890, there have been nearly 34-millions of individuals without property in the United States. The third chapter has shown that about one-half the results of their labor must be expended for the necessary support of existence, while the other half must go to enrich the owners of rentable farms and homes for which these owners draw incomes from the propertyless, without any labor or without any expenditure of their own energy. Besides this, out of the more than 47-millions of individuals in the gainful pursuits,[[112]] there must have been hundreds of thousands of families who have small properties, like homes, but their members have been obliged to support themselves by laboring under the same conditions of dividogenesure as did the propertyless.
If we admit then that there have been only 38,837,849 individuals in the gainful pursuits absolutely under the principle |DAILY INCOME FROM THE POOR.| of dividogenesure, and that if one million families have employed them in various ways, gaining 25 cents daily from each person thus employed, the total daily income of these families would be $9,709,462 per every day.[[113]] And if the labor year on an average, for all, consists of 250 days, the yearly income of the million families would amount to $2,327,365,500. This amount then would be yearly added to the aggregate wealth of the fourth group of the 2d R. table, p. 47. Though most of the income would go to only a few families among the million.
And if the mortgagor families continued to exist even without an increase in their numbers—which is really impossible, for the mortgages certainly must have increased—and continued to pay the annual |INCOME FROM THE DEBTORS.| interest charge at the rate of $539,352,898, as has been stated on pp. [125], [126], then the yearly income of the wealthy families in the 4th group of the 2d R. table must have been still greater than what they could get from the propertyless alone on the condition of giving them employment, and renting them the rentable farms and homes. In fact, the direct and indirect profit in favor of the wealthy few from the application of the labor energy of the above millions of the economically enslaved would amount to $20,067,028,786 worth of wealth during seven years. And what do we have?
Mr. G. B. Waldron, continuing the estimates of the increase of wealth by the Director of the Mint, from 1870 to 1897, has shown that by 1890 the increase |INCREASE OF WEALTH.| of wealth had reached $65,037,091,197, as has been already stated in several places, while in 1897 the increase amounted to $86,825,000,000 worth.[[114]] So that an addition of $21,787,908,803 worth of wealth has been made by the people’s energy during seven years. Yet, with this enormous increase of the wealth in seven years, listen! listen! to what the statisticians said in 1897:
“In the United States wealth has increased phenomenally; wages since 1873 have fallen (on account of too great supply of labor); the concentration of capital has |STATISTICAL CONCLUSIONS.| increased; the number of the out of work has grown.”[[115]] Some men tried to minimize the significance of these statements by proving the contrary situation. Mr. Atkinson is one of those who said that “wages have risen and prices fallen,” which view he entertained on the bases of government reports. But all such arguments “have been shown in the article ‘Wages’ of Enc. of Soc. Reform, to be false.”[[116]] And Prof. Mayo Smith has disproved all attempts of these men to show that the wages have risen, on the whole, by showing the falsehood of the averages such men represented in their arguments.[[117]]