The increased families of the farming occupations, by having paid the average rent of $2.75 per acre, for the average of 136 acres of land per family,[[147]] have paid sums as follows:
| 31,698 | families in 7 years paid | $ 82,985,364 |
| 31,698 | families in 6 years paid | 71,130,312 |
| 31,698 | families in 5 years paid | 59,275,260 |
| 31,698 | families in 4 years paid | 47,420,208 |
| 31,698 | families in 3 years paid | 35,565,156 |
| 31,698 | families in 2 years paid | 23,710,104 |
| 31,698 | families in 1 year paid | 11,855,052 |
| 221,886 | Total | $331,941,456 |
That’s what the increase of the homeless and landless population means. The newly formed families could neither avoid paying the rents in favor of the same landed and propertied rich; nor could they avoid paying indirect taxes in favor of the national government, as we shall soon see. And they could not avoid being the slaves of dividogenesure, nor of being victims of extortion by various trusts and monopolies. In making our final conclusion of the profits and losses, the above amounts of $669,224,136 worth of paid rents by the increased families will be included into the previous totals of house and land rents.
But, in respect to all farmers’ rents and the average acreage, it should again be noticed that we have dealt only with minimums of their expenditure in favor of the land monopolies. |INCREASE OF RENTED FARMS.| For, “according to the abstract of the eleventh census (p. [97]), farms cultivated by their owners increased 9.56 per cent; rented farms, 41.04 per cent, and farms rented for a share in product,[[148]] 19.65 per cent. In the north central division farms cultivated by their owners increased less than 1 per cent, while rented farms increased 66 per cent. In the North Atlantic division, rented farms increased only 6 per cent, while farms cultivated by their owners actually diminished. The farmers thus complain that they are losing possession of their farms and becoming tenant farmers.”[[149]]
On p. [112] we have seen the enormous amount of indebtedness on the owned farms in the United States.[[150]] “The percentage of incumbered farms was, for the United |PERCENTAGE OF INDEBTED FARMS.| States, 47; Kansas, 30; Iowa, 32; New Jersey and Mississippi, 34; Nebraska, Delaware, and South Carolina, 35; South Dakota, 39; and at the other extreme, Oklahoma, 95; Utah and New Mexico, 85; Arizona and Idaho, 74; Montana, 73; Maine, 71.”[[151]] This economic state of the farms and farmers continued to exist from 1890. Consequently there is enough evidence to make one sure that thousands of farm mortgagors have lost their mortgaged farms by foreclosure, and have become merely tenant farmers without real property. The increase of the propertyless through mortgages may even be greater than through the increase of the population, though we regard only the latter.
Seeing also that the “Principal of Public Debt” has increased from $1,549,206,126 in 1890 to $2,092,686,024 in 1899,[[152]] it is probable, therefore, that the indebtedness of private families |INCREASE OF PUBLIC DEBT.| has also greatly increased up to the end of 1897. Yet, except the annual interest charge against the indebtedness in force from 1890, neither the increase of the mortgage losses, nor the increase of the gains from them, has entered into our accounts, even as the great net earnings of the non-national banks, often drawing immense profits from mortgages, etc., have been totally omitted from our estimate.[[153]]
If, therefore, there should be any decrease in the few unrevised net earnings of the natural monopolies after 1890,[[154]] the net earnings of the above banks alone would abundantly fill up the loss with a great remaining superfluity. Seeing also that the cities grow and the population increases, increasing every business in favor of the same monopolies, no one will doubt that our conclusions will be moderate, and especially so, because we have failed to ascertain the net incomes of several trusts.
As to the trusts, the American Anti-Trust Journal, No. 3, Chicago, says: “Go and talk to the thousands of commercial travelers—those skirmishers on the firing line of commercial independence—who have been thrown out of employment by the trusts. They will tell you of hundreds and hundreds of business men who have been forced out of business within the last four or five years. They will tell you how the trusts ordered one man after another to close his establishment. They will give you the names of ambitious and thriving proprietors who are now clerks or agents of gigantic corporate combinations, all hope dead, all opportunity gone.” Dealing as it does with the trusts of still later development, the array of facts in this Journal shows that our final conclusions for 1897 can only be very moderate.
This being so, and disregarding the crooked ways of making profits, let us then make up the complete summary of the preceding losses by the United States people during the period from 1891 to 1897 inclusive, as follows:
| Monopolies and Combinations. | Total Net Incomes. |
|---|---|
| The natural monopolies[[155]] | $ 4,255,826,950 |
| Mortgagee monopolies[[156]] | 3,775,470,286 |
| Owners of rentable houses[[157]] | 5,503,857,212 |
| Monopolies of rentable lands[[158]] | 4,585,276,226 |
| Owners of rentable offices, etc., in cities | 3,033,425,468 |
| Manufacture and mechanical trades | 7,812,000,000 |
| Mining monopolies | 560,000,000 |
| Grand total | $29,526,156,142 |
| National and local taxes paid by them[[159]] | 3,455,963,952 |
| The Total Concentration of Wealth | $26,070,192,190 |
| The total increase of national wealth | 21,787,908,803 |
| Excess of net incomes over and above the total increase of the national wealth | $ 4,282,283,387 |