Here you see the very thing I explained. How much pork and beef shall be figured in the family budget of a workingman? Our fathers ate pork and beef, and grew to be full sized men; but of course there was no beef trust in those days. If, now, the cost of pork and beef rise too fast, the workingman can adjust himself to a coolie diet, those starchy foods which are cheap and relatively stable in price. But I, for my part, eat pork or beef once a day, and I claim the same right for you, Judd!
This much is certain: in many basic industries there has been a loss. The new figures which the professor sends me show losses for the clerical workers and the postal clerks; and the only large gainers are the teachers, who regard themselves as professional persons, not as workingmen. Surely those striking textile workers in Massachusetts have made no gains this year, nor the 158,000 striking miners! Ask the farmers of the Northwest about their case, and you will hear a loud shout of denial! Ex-governor Lowden of Illinois stated at a public banquet in New York that from 1920 to 1924 the American farmer’s return on his invested capital was three-tenths of one per cent!
I know there is a great deal of apparent prosperity among our workers today. But that is due to a new factor—that the worker now spends his money for things that last, a home, and an auto, and clothing and radio sets, instead of spending it for beer and whiskey. That is a vast gain in civilization, but it is not the same thing as a gain in real wages, and don’t let anybody fool you by this argument.
To get a clear view of the real truth, ask this question: has the capitalist suffered a loss of purchasing power during the past thirty-five years? Merely to suggest such a thing is to raise a laugh! There are some, like Henry Ford, who are a million times richer today than they were thirty-five years ago. It is probable that the Rockefellers are twenty times as rich as in 1890. The total wealth of our country increased from 65 billions in 1890 to 320 billions in 1922; and as the workers didn’t get the difference, the rich must have. Here is what they admit having got, in their income tax statements, during four years 1921-1924. The number of fortunate ones who got more than $300,000 a year income increased from 246 to 773. The number of those with incomes between $100,000 and $300,000 increased from 2,106 to 4,921. The number with incomes between $25,000 and $100,000 increased from 37,663 to 62,158. Those are the real insiders—and remember, Judd, they didn’t have to admit any “stock dividends,” nor to pay anything on the billion or two they have invested in tax exempt securities.
There is a statement commonly made by Socialists, justifying their prophecy that our present system is on the way to a breakdown. The statement is that the rich are growing richer and the poor growing poorer. I know of no statement which causes more irritation to the capitalist press; I suppose I have read a thousand editorials in which the statement is ridiculed, or denounced, or waved aside as out-of-date and not applying to America. Nevertheless, it is the truth, Judd; all the workers are growing relatively poorer, and vast groups of them are growing absolutely poorer, in the terms of what they can buy with their wages. And this in the headquarters of prosperity, the richest of all nations, which houses in its treasure-vaults more than half the total gold-reserves of the world!
LETTER III
My dear Judd:
How does it happen that, in this our land of liberty and prosperity, the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer.
When you talk about the matter with an economist, he uses many long words, and tells you about natural processes, controlled by inexorable laws. Well, Judd, it all depends upon how you look at it, from the inside or the outside. If you look from the outside, you see economic processes; but if you look from the inside, you see the actions of men. Wealth is produced by the actions of men—you know that, because you do it every day; and wealth is distributed by the actions of men—you also do that every day. If men, in the course of their dealings, have made a hell on earth, it has been because they first had a hell in their hearts; and if they are to make a paradise on earth, they first have to change their hearts, and then no economic laws will stand in their way.