Another item of similar losses is represented by the 350,000 miners whose wages since 1890 have fallen “exceptionally low.”[[143]] So that it would be perfectly safe to regard |SPECIAL LOSSES OF THE MINERS.| the average fall in their daily wages at 15 cents, and the labor year at 266 days, allowing again for a possible unemployment. This being so, they have lost about $13,965,000 in one year. And as their average wages did not really rise again during the period under consideration, they must, therefore, have lost about $97,755,000 worth of their labor energy in favor of the mining trusts and monopolies. While the profits of these monopolies in 1890 amounted to $80,000,000,[[143]] when the total income was $210,000,000 which we leave out of further consideration. |PROFITS OF THE MINING MONOPOLIES.| The $80,000,000 profits must naturally have increased with these monopolies. But even if repeated as they were in that year, they must have amounted to $560,000,000 during the seven years. Considering the excess of selling price over the cost of production here at the rate of 12.95 per cent, this amount of net profits includes $72,520,000 worth of the public losses, of unjustifiable extortion.
Beside all this, I find the telephone and telegraph monopolies[[144]] had an increase of $229,624,566, and the railroad monopolies[[144]] of $80,377,053 in their net earnings over and above the amount on pp. [101], [150]. The same course is true of many other monopolies and combinations.
And as Henry B. Brown, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, in an address at the Yale Law School, June 24, 1895, said:
“If no student can light his lamp without paying to one company; if no housekeeper can buy a pound of meat or of sugar without |ALL PRODUCTS ABSORBED BY COMBINATIONS.| swelling the receipts of two or three all pervading trusts, what is to prevent the entire productive industry of the country becoming ultimately absorbed by a hundred gigantic corporations?”[[145]] The foregoing facts clearly show that the corporations, whether under boards of trustees or under directors of monopolies, with the principle of dividogenesure do, not only absorb the entire mass of products of the people, but absorb even the wealth that was formerly produced and now being gradually lost.
But let us now turn to the meaning of the increase of the population in connection with the preceding facts and estimates for the seven years. The table on the next page shows it.
| Years. | Individuals. | Percents in Cities. | Years. | Individuals. | Percents in Cities. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1790 | 3,929,214 | 3.35 | 1850 | 23,191,897 | 12.49 |
| 1800 | 5,308,463 | 3.97 | 1860 | 31,443,321 | 16.13 |
| 1810 | 7,239,881 | 4.93 | 1870 | 38,588,371 | 20.93 |
| 1820 | 9,633,822 | 4.93 | 1880 | 50,155,783 | 22.57 |
| 1830 | 12,866,020 | 6.72 | 1890 | 62,622,250 | 29.20 |
| 1840 | 17,069,453 | 8.52 | 1897 | 71,551,571 | [[146]] |
The preceding table shows that, from 1891 to 1897 inclusively, the population of the United States increased by about 8,929,321 individuals, or, distributing this |INCREASE OF POPULATION.| number over seven years, the increase will be 1,250,000 souls in each successive year. And the approximate proportions of this increase indicate that every year about 105,665 new families were reproduced by the 5,246,334 families that hire their homes; and about 31,698 by the 1,624,765 families that hire their farms, leaving out here the propertied. And the heritage of these 137,363 newly formed families under the conditions is to be homeless and landless subjects of dividogenesure, even as their unfortunate parents are. For scarcely any of them could acquire property and thus escape paying rent.
If then we conclude that the one set of the newly born families consisted of the tenants of rentable |RENT PAID FOR HOUSES.| homes, while the other of the tenants rentable farms, we must admit that they paid at least the same average rents for homes and farms as their parents did. Therefore, the first set per family paid $9.50 a month as follows:
| 105,665 | families in 7 years paid | $ 84,320,670 |
| 105,665 | families in 6 years paid | 72,274,860 |
| 105,665 | families in 5 years paid | 60,229,050 |
| 105,665 | families in 4 years paid | 48,183,240 |
| 105,665 | families in 3 years paid | 36,137,430 |
| 105,665 | families in 2 years paid | 24,091,620 |
| 105,665 | families in 1 year paid | 12,045,810 |
| 739,655 | Total | $337,282,680 |
Thus the homeless families of the year 1891 paid the largest amount of the house rents up to the |RENT PAID FOR FARMS.| end of 1897. Meanwhile the other yearly additions of the new families paid less and less, on account of having been younger in age. The number of the increased families renting houses, then, was 739,655, and the total of the rent they paid was $337,282,680.