The Impending Crisis. Basil A. Bouroff
it must work out its end; |DANGER.| it must of living necessity produce revolution and bloodshed. And neither the extremely moderate statisticians, nor the false averages, of even of the meanest falsehood, can prevent its action toward such a horrible result. “You remember the French revolution?” |FRENCH REVOLUTION, ROME.| asked Hon. Jno. S. Crosby of his audience in Binghamton,[15] N. Y., and then he said: “In France all the lands had come into the hands of a few people, the king and nobles, and a majority of the people were depending on them for a living. The time came when these down-trodden people rose up and Paris streets ran with blood. Your country will have the same experience if you keep on fooling with the laws of God.
“Rome was once the mistress of the whole world. She lorded it over the other countries. But she fell, and Pliny, her historian, lays the cause of her downfall to land monopoly.”[16] And so it was with ancient Egypt; so it was with ancient Assyria, and so it was with the Byzantine Empire, those great and powerful nations that perished for similar misconduct in relation to themselves.
Exactly so, this young nation also irrationally strides in the way of Rome. The concentration of her wealth in a few hands is now more rapid than it was before the last |RUSH OF THE NATION.| census. That census brought about astonishing conclusions, yet the nation rushes as fast as she can to her ruin. And who can locate the weight of responsibility for her end? Every one seems to think about his selfish interests. Consequently, nothing has been done in the past to evade the ruin; nothing but the greatest national harm is being done in the present; and no fundamental |LOGICAL PREMISES FOR THE YEAR OF. … | measure, no rational remedy, no serious means appear for delaying it in the future. While the Logical Premises[17] for revolution and bloodshed have been established in the nation’s life, and their forces have been working to that inexorable end.
Now we are ready to present another conclusion that the statisticians of 1890 reached. It deals with the numbers of families, leaving out the individual inhabitants.
We have been assured that the U. S. nation in 1890 consisted of 12,690,152 families, and that each family, on an average, consisted of little less than 5 members, namely: 4.93 members.[18] The distribution of the national wealth among families, therefore, was expressed as follows:
“Less than half the families in America are propertyless; nevertheless, seven-eighths of the families |HALF THE NATION.| hold but one-eighth of the national wealth,” and vice versa. “While one per cent of the families hold more (wealth) than the remaining ninety-nine,” says Dr. C. B. Spahr.[19]
At last we have struck in these conclusions a piece of more serious reality. “Less than half the families in the United States are propertyless.” Here you are! “Less than half.” |CONCLUSIONS OF REALITY.| Yet even here, we are far from the fulness of truth. It seems as if the statisticians themselves were afraid to reveal the full truth to the people. And there are many intelligent persons who believe that the pure and complete truth should be known only to God Omniscient, while His creatures must be content to know but particles of truth mixed with falsehood.
As long, however, as the U. S. nation remains a democratic nation, and as long as responsibility for its prosperity or distress and disaster |RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PEOPLE.| rests upon a majority of its people, this people ought to know not particles, but the whole truth of the conditions of their existence. Otherwise the least possible minority of the sharks in human form or the wolves in sheep’s skin, may devour or ruin the greatest bulk of the people.
Let us then illustrate here one of the above conclusions, while leaving the two others for later discussion.
“Seven-eighths of the families hold but one-eighth of the national wealth,” and vice versa, as the diagrams on the following page indicate, where the 12,690,152 families represent 62,622,250 individuals as in the preceding diagrams.
Population: 12,690,152.[20] Wealth: $65,037,091,197.
These diagrams represent exactly the truth of the conclusion: “Seven-eighths of the families of this nation held but one-eighth of the national wealth;[20] or seven-eighths of the nation’s wealth was held by but one-eighth of the families.
The table on the next page illustrates some of the details of the above conclusion.
The upper division of that table presents the distribution of wealth among the families, where the two “per family” averages indicate |FAMILIES.| a difference in the worth of more than 11-million families that held $732 each, and the worth of little over 1½-million families that held $35,875 each. So that, each family of the latter group was worth as much as 49 families of the former. While the general average of $5,125 shows that, if the national wealth had been equally distributed among all families, every one of them would have had this average amount as its own.
| Table III. | ||||
| Proportions of | Number of families in groups. | Proportions of | Aggregate wealth per group, in dollars. | Average wealth per family. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ⅞ | 11,103,883 | ⅛ | 8,129,636,399 | $ 732 |
| ⅛ | 1,586,269 | ⅞ | 56,907,454,798 | 35,875 |
| 8/8 | 12,690,152 | 8/8 | 65,037,091,197 | 5,125 |
| Number of individuals. | Wealth—the same in dollars. | Wealth per head. | ||
| ⅞ | 54,794,468 | ⅛ | 8,129,636,399 | $ 148 |
| ⅛ | 7,827,782 | ⅞ | 56,907,454,798 | 7,269 |
| 8/8 | 62,622,250 | 8/8 | 65,037,091,197 | 1,036 |
The lower division of the table represents the same amounts of national wealth, the same population, only individually considered; and both the wealth and the population |INDIVIDUALS.| were divided into eight parts each, in order to carry out the proportions between numbers of the individuals and the wealth they possessed. The result in this division is that 7,827,782 individuals have had an average wealth of $7,269 each man, woman and child, and 54,794,468 individuals had but $148 worth of wealth to every head.[21] The difference between the worth of one person of the one group, and one person of the other group, is $7,121 in favor of the rich person. And that, again, one person of the wealthy class, on an average, is worth more than 49 persons of the poor class.
But the most astounding fact is that we have over 54½-million inhabitants of this poverty-stricken class, and we have only a |NUMBERS NEAREST TO THE TRUE ONES.| little more than 7½-million inhabitants of the wealth-swollen class. So that, these 54½-million individuals appear to be totally dependent upon the mercies and motions of 7½-million persons who are steadily growing richer and decreasing in numbers, while the poor are growing poorer and rapidly increasing in numbers. For such has been the growth of economic slavery that the above millions have to combat with.
Besides