The Impending Crisis. Basil A. Bouroff
For it was clear that every new investigation of the distribution of wealth confirmed the fact of a more and more rapid concentration of the national wealth in fewer hands than before. And it is the question of poverty, that spreads like contagion, that the American people have now to deal with, in view of a phenomenal increase of the national wealth which concentrates in the few hands. And it is this question that cannot be set at rest while millions grow poorer and poorer and the propertyless increase in numbers, as we shall soon see.
The people cannot set this question at rest until they know the truth of the different statistical tables, indicating the nation’s situation and destiny. And we cannot rest until we make a series of propositions for the purpose of producing more equal distribution of wealth in this country. And even then we cannot rest, until our propositions be applied to the irrational life of the nation, with the purpose of working out justice for the people. When we see all this in their actual life, then we shall rest, as the people shall be regaining their freedom, their property, their resources of income, their rights to work and to enjoy the fruits of their toil. The intelligent people cannot and must not rest before they reach a resting place. They cannot always be deceived by the shallow and selfish arguments which prove that the national wealth increases enormously—for it so increases only with the few and rapidly decreases with the entire people. But the time will come when the tens of millions will no longer vote for men who deprive them of all rights, self-respect and liberty.
As we shall see later on, the 32,563,644 persons |UTENSILS AS WEALTH.| of the last group of the table I possessed no real wealth at all even at the census in 1890. For though the diagrams represent them as having had $99 worth of wealth to every head, yet this wealth was personal and not productive.
STATISTICAL CONCLUSIONS OF MR. SHEARMAN.
“An estimate of the distribution of wealth in the United States was made by Mr. Thomas G. Shearman |RESEARCHES OF MR. SHEARMAN.| in the ‘Forum’ for 1889, and for January, 1891. It was based on careful estimates of the wealth of the very wealthy, a list of which he gave, and estimates of the division of the remaining wealth of the country between the middle class and the poor based on assessors’ returns.”[10]
“Mr. Shearman came to the conclusion that 1.4 per cent of the population own 70 per cent of the wealth; 9.2 per cent of the population own 12 per cent of the wealth; and 89.4 per cent of the population own only 18 per cent of the wealth.”[11]
In these conclusions, we have a still greater twist of facts by wrong handling. Now, to illustrate these conclusions as they stand by another set of diagrams, they will be as follows:
Population: 62,622,250. Wealth: $65,037,091,197.
These diagrams indicate by percentages the exact conclusions of Mr. Shearman in respect to the population and the wealth distribution in this country. The author |LOOSE AVERAGES.| of these conclusions obviously put too much salt of his own into his averages; for, by parceling out the wealth of a number of the well-to-do and rich people, he succeeded in persuading his readers, that, in America, the body of tens of millions of propertyless people, the paupers and the tramps, do not possess, on an average, less than $200 worth of wealth for each person, including women and children of all ages. Whereas, in reality, the wealth from which he made the fictitious averages, belongs to a very few persons of the nation. While an astonishing majority of the people, as we shall see, have no rights whatever to this wealth.
Let us again illustrate the conclusions in a tabular way for the sake of definiteness:
| Table II.[12] | ||||
| Percent. of population. | Population in economic groups. | Percent. of wealth. | Aggregates of wealth per group in dollars. | Wealth per head in dollars. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.4 | 876,710 | 70 | 45,525,973,867 | 51,928 |
| 9.2 | 5,761,242 | 12 | 7,804,450,932 | 1,354 |
| 89.4 | 55,984,298 | 18 | 11,706,676,398 | 209 |
| 100.00 | 62,622,250 | 100 | 65,037,091,197 | 1,036 |
The first glance at this table and a glance at the table on page 6 show the reader that Mr. Shearman divided the population into three groups; and Mr. Holmes divided it |LINES OF DIVISION OF THE PEOPLE.| into five groups. The bases of division are economic in both tables; but the lines of division are very different with the one statistical authority and the other. If we examine these lines, we shall find that Mr. Holmes’ fifth group consists of over 32½ million persons who, taken together, had been worth a little over 3 billion dollars; so that, each person of the group could have about $99 worth of wealth, as the average of table I shows. The next higher group of the same author, which comprises nearly 7 million persons, had, on an average, more wealth to each person, than each person could have in the fifth group, hence the per capita wealth of the fourth group of people was $377. While the group still higher up in wealth, which consists of little over 17½ million persons, and which had over 13 billion dollars’ worth of wealth, could have $741 to every head, that is, if this wealth were equally divided among them. The second group of Mr. Holmes’ division consists of over 5½ million persons, among whom the poorest ones had, probably not less than $5,000 worth of wealth, as their average worth of over $59,000 shows. Such a division of the population into five economic groups, if every family is rightly and honestly valued, presents an immense amount of truth to the public judgment.[13]
But what Mr. Shearman really did with his estimates and conclusions is this: Seeing that the extent of poverty is appalling, he made the division line in the group of |SWEEPING AVERAGE.| well-to-do people; he thus made the group of the very poor extend so far as to comprise nearly 56 million persons; and then, by dividing the wealth of the well-to-do persons among all these millions, he obtained an average of $209 worth of wealth to every pauper, to every tramp, to every man, woman and child—who have had no wealth, and have had no rights whatever to the wealth they are nominally represented as entitled to.
Consequently, his distribution of wealth among the third group of people is merely on paper, is nominal, is showy, and it does not correspond to reality with reference |ONLY NOMINAL DISTRIBUTION.| to more than 35 million persons as represented in Mr. Holmes’ distribution of this wealth. Mr. Shearman might as well follow the example of Mr. Carroll D. Wright[14] and, by a single effort in calculation, divide among all individuals the 70 per cent of wealth that belongs to his 1.4 per cent of the people. In doing that, he might apportion more than $1,000 worth of it to |JESUITS AND GALILEO.| every penniless individual, and then might say, Why, we are all rich, we are the most civilized and righteous people in the world! But such an effort, and such an assertion, however, would not at all alter the real situation; no more than Galileo, when in view of the danger of death, signing the Jesuit verdict in favor of the non-revolution of our planet round the sun, could thereby stop the actual revolution of the earth; for the earth’s progressive motion went on, in spite of the ardent desire and policy of the Jesuits to make it stand still by a verdict. Nothing but an indescribable shock of the earth against another heavenly body can change its principles of motion.
The same is true of the nation. Once the