It does not, however, make a difference whether we accept the whole amount of rent estimated by Dr. Spahr or simply add the three billions and over to our grand total, p. [150]. In any way, these facts indicate that the wealth has concentrated with the very families that were enormously wealthy in 1890 and appeared to be much wealthier in 1897.
Yet the concentration of wealth is not only very rapid in drawing the wealth of all the 11,190,152 families worth $5,000 and under[[132]] to |CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH IN HIGHER SPHERES.| a very few families of the 4th group in the 2d table,[[133]] but it is also rapid among the families worth $5,000 and over,[[134]] so that all are crushed by the monopolies, the trusts and combinations. In order to illustrate it, I here quote the same authority that estimated the increase of the wealth from 1890 to 1897 before making a conclusion from the foregoing, respecting industries, as follows:
“As to development of ‘the’ trusts before 1890,” Mr. G. B. Waldron says:
“Of the manufacturing and mechanical industries, whose statistics were returned in the census |TRUSTS IN INDUSTRIES.| of 1890, there are 43 whose manufactured product for the year 1889 was about $30,000,000, whose capital averaged above $10,000 per establishment, and which admitted of comparison with the census of 1880. Of these 43 industries we have chosen 30 as especially illustrating the growing concentration of capital during the 10 years from 1880 to 1890.
“It is a significant fact that while in 1880 these industries were carried on by 84,708 establishments, or about 33 per cent of the total number of manufacturing establishments of the country, the same industries in 1890 were carried on by only 69,659 establishments, or about 22 per cent of the total establishments, and fewer in number by over 15,000 than in 1880.
“The value of the total product of these 30 industries in 1880 was $3,125,915,574, or 58 per cent of the total manufacturing products of the country. In 1890 these same industries produced products to the value of $4,595,804,626, or about 51 per cent of the total product.
“The concentration of capital in these 30 industries is shown from the fact that in 1880 their total capital was $1,735,577,540, or an average of $20,489 per establishment, while in 1890 their total capital reached $3,468,277,249, or $49,789 per establishment, a gain of 143 per cent in 10 years. There has been a similar concentration of employees in these industries. In 1880 the 84,708 establishments used 1,340,490 employees, or an average of 16 to an establishment. In 1890 there were 1,964,232 employees in these industries, or an average of 28 to an establishment.”[[135]]
This is a separate and an additional item of the concentration of wealth which undoubtedly continued—from 1890 to 1897—to farther aggravate the general situation, shown by the grand total of the net incomes in favor of monopolies, on p. [150], beside the uncertain ones.
For the 30 different industries, taken out of the 43, have perhaps forever supplanted 15,049 factories and other establishments in ten years. During the same time the supplanters did much more than double their own capital. In fact the increase in the capital of these supplanters reached the amount of $1,732,699,709 over the capital they had in 1880.
But, if Mr. Waldron would investigate the same facts in the total number of industries, he could probably show us that the supplanting of different establishments reached at least 21,586, and that the increase of capital reached over two billion dollars’ worth with the fewer supplanters. That is, if the above rate of concentration of the capital were the same, as it must have been, throughout the industrial operations in the entire country.