The industrial overlord holds control of the job with one hand. With the other he controls the product of industry. From the time the raw material leaves the earth in the form of iron ore, crude petroleum, logs, or coal, through all of the processes of production, it is owned by the industrial master, not by the worker. Workers separate the product from the earth, transport it, refine it, fabricate it. Always, the product, like the machinery, is the possession of the owning class.
While industry was competitive, the pressure of competition kept prices at a cost level, and the exploiting power of the owner was confined to the job-holder. To-day, through combinations and consolidations, industry has ceased to be competitive, and the exploiting power of the job-owner is extended through his ownership of the product.
The modern town-dweller is almost wholly in the hands of the private owners of the products upon which he depends. The ordinary city dweller spends two-fifths of his income for food; one-fifth for rent, fuel and light, and one-fifth for clothes. Food, houses, fuel (with the exception of gas supply in some cities), and clothing are privately owned. The public ownership of streets and water works, of some gas, electricity, street cars, and public markets, is a negligible factor in the problem. The private monopolist has the upper hand and he is able through the control of transportation, storage, and merchandising facilities, to make handsome profits for the "service" which he renders the consumer.
7. The Control of the Surplus
The wealth owners are doubly entrenched. They own the jobs upon which most families depend for a living. They own the necessaries of life which most families must purchase in order to live. Further, they control the surplus wealth of the community.
There are three principal channels of surplus. First of all there is the surplus laid aside by business concerns, reinvested in the business, spent for new equipment and disposed of in other ways that add to the value of the property. Second, there are the 19,103 people in the United States with incomes of $50,000 or more per year; the 30,391 people with incomes of $25,000 to $50,000 per year and the 12,502 people with incomes of $10,000 to $25,000 per year. (Figures for 1917.) Many, if not most of these rich people, carry heavy insurance, invest in securities, or in some other way add to surplus. In the third place there are the small investors, savings-bank depositors, insurance policy holders who, from their income, have saved something and have laid it aside for the rainy day. The masters of economic life—bankers, insurance men, property holders, business directors—are in control of all three forms of surplus.
The billions of surplus wealth that come each year under the control of the masters carry with them an immense authority over the affairs of the community. The owners of wealth owe much of their immediate power to the fact that they control this surplus, and are in a position to direct its flow into such channels as they may select.
8. The Channels of Public Opinion
No one can question the control which business interests exercise over the jobs, the industrial product, and the economic surplus of the community. These facts are universally admitted. But the corollaries which flow naturally from such axioms are not so readily accepted. Yet given the economic power of the business world, the control over the channels of public opinion and over the machinery of government follows as a matter of course.
The channels of public opinion—the school, the press, the pulpit,—are not directly productive of tangible economic goods, yet they depend upon tangible economic goods for their maintenance. Whence should these goods come? Whence but from the system that produces them, through the men who control that system! The plutocracy exercises its power over the channels of public opinion in two ways,—the first, by a direct or business office control; and second, by an indirect or social prestige control.