PROPERTIED AND PROPERTYLESS PEOPLE.
The statistical authorities told us that “Less than half the families in
the United States are propertyless,”[49] and we desire to know the
chances for, and resources of, their living; and what it means to be a
propertied person or to be a propertyless person upon earth.
Let us see the clear distinction between the [SN: CONDITIONS OF LIFE OF
THE PROPERTIED AND PROPERTYLESS.] state of a property owner and the
state of a propertyless person; between the conditions of life of the
former, and the conditions of life of the latter, and how both are
affected by and related to these conditions.
First of all an owner of property and a propertyless person, are, on an
average, perfectly equal in that they have physical strength, and in
that they have equal rights to use or to apply that strength somewhere
[SN: EQUAL IN PHYSICAL STRENGTH.] upon the wealth of an owner of wealth.
And here we meet the first difference between them: An owner of property
has a chance to apply, and to spend his strength upon his own property;
if, for instance, this property is land that gives him any kind of
returns in exchange for his [SN: THE ONE HAS, THE OTHER HAS NO CHANCE.]
labor and toil. The propertyless person has neither this chance nor this
right to toil anywhere, unless he pays for the opportunity of using his
strength, by dividing the results of his labor between himself and the
owner of wealth who permits him to draw some income from the resources
of his own property or wealth. So far, the advantage of the propertied
person is such that he has twice as much right in his strength, and
twice as much chance to profitably use his personal strength.
Now, every one knows that whatever the wealth of a nation may be, it is
primarily derived from land which is the only inexhaustible source of
riches, or, of derived wealth. And when a person gets [SN: LAND PRIME
ORIGIN OF WEALTH.] into his possession a portion of land, whether it
will be in a city, town, or in the country, he then obtains a number of
resources for his life; he becomes a propertied man, and he can apply
his strength, his skill or his intellect upon his own property and thus
reap the fruits of his labor. The land then is the first store of
wealth; but it almost never yields anything to man, unless he labors,
works upon it, with a hoe, a plough, a scythe or some other implement
that aids him to draw greater returns from his land. Again, if iron, for
instance, is primarily derived from land, then [SN: LAND MAIN FACTOR OF
WEALTH.] when it comes to the forge, where the hammer, the anvil and the
other tools aid the blacksmith to make an ax out of the rough iron, the
ax will be of a greater value than the material he used for it. But what
really made the ax is his personal strength and the skill that were
aided by the tools he used. These tools with the blacksmith, and those
implements with the farmer are economically called [SN: SKILL SECOND
FACTOR OF WEALTH.] “capital,” because they aid to draw more wealth by
the labor of man. It follows, that land is the main factor of wealth;
that human energy or labor is the next factor of wealth; and that
capital, as aiding labor and land to produce more wealth than they can
yield without it, is the third factor of wealth. Money is not regarded
as direct capital here.
As _capital_ is a very important source of income to a propertied man,
and as it is perhaps not clearly understood by all, let me illustrate
this factor of wealth by introducing more examples of it.
Capital from an economic standpoint is that wealth which produces
farther wealth, or simply aids to create farther wealth. A needle is
capital, because it aids to [SN: CAPITAL THIRD FACTOR OF WEALTH.] make a
shirt that costs more than the material used for it. A sewing machine is
capital of more effective kind than the needle used by hand, because it
aids to produce more wealth than the tailor or the seamstress can
produce without it. A lathe is capital, because it not only shapes the
round forms of any material more accurately than [SN: MACHINERY, TOOLS,
ARTIFICIAL WEALTH.] the artizan would ever be able to make without it,
but it greatly saves his time on every piece of the work; thus saving
time it aids in producing more wealth. A factory, as a whole (including
the building and machinery), is capital, because all the machinery, all
tools and instruments used in it produce farther wealth from the raw
materials, and serve as sources of income to the owner of this property.
Under the care of the stock-raiser, cattle are capital, because they
grow and multiply; but the meat or beef is utility, because it may be
unproductively consumed.[50] Agricultural implements, as well as the
fertilizers, like guano, phosphates and many others are capital, because
they increase fertility and increase the produce of land, which makes a
greater income in favor of its owner. A thousand different machineries
and special instruments might be introduced here to show that each one
of them has been invented for the purpose of aiding to create more
wealth out of less wealth. And that all of them and every one, when used
by an owner of wealth, is a definite source of income and of profit to
him, because it aids his own skill and energy to obtain greater returns
in exchange for his labor and mind, than he can obtain without it.
But the most effective factor in aiding to produce more wealth and a
much greater income for an owner of wealth is the energy of steam or any
other mechanical force, applicable to various forms of labor [SN:
MECHANICAL FORCE; INCREASE OF STEAM.] and completely obedient to the
bidding of man. “Steam power has increased in the United States from
3½-millions, in 1860, to 17-millions horse power in 1895; while in Great
Britain and Ireland it has increased from 2½- to 13-millions; Germany
from ⅞- to 7⅔-millions, and in France from 1 to 5-millions horse-power.
The increase of this capital has been most manifest in manufactures,”
says Dr. Henderson.[51] But it should be remarked at once that no one of
the families worth below $5,000 could apply these millions of horsepower
of steam force upon their properties. This energy has all the time been
a profitable source of great income in favor of the families that made
the wealthiest group in the tables of statistics, whereas the others
have had but little crumbs of its increase of wealth. The mechanical
force, as every one knows, is in service of the capitalists.
But when we look into the limits of towns and cities, we find millions
of rentable properties of all possible kinds; and every factory, [SN:
SOURCES OF INCOME.] every storehouse, every shop and every dwelling
house there is a sure source of income to the propertied man. The very
sweat-shops, where the working people can not, on an average, live
longer than 28 years—even these dens of poison and pestilence are
inexhaustible sources of income and profit to their owners.
As to the town and city lots, they are all sources of greater or less
income to the men who own them. Whether these lots of land are occupied
by [SN: SOURCES OF INDIRECT INCOME.] anything or are remaining waste,
makes little difference, because as the town population increases, their
values also increase in proportion as the city population and its
business increase; the owners of properties towards centers of the
cities are usually bound to be rich out of the resources of rent. Even a
simple house, somewhere about the marginal line of a city or town is
usually a source of indirect income to its owner, because he and his
family may have a comfortable shelter in it, without which they would
pay the rent for another’s house,[52] and would carry on all other
expenses of life, just as they do in their own house, in which they save
the rental money for some other purposes of living.
Now then, whatever property you may think of—whether natural or
artificial, whether animate or inanimate, that a person has possession
of—it is always wealth, and a source of income in his favor. [SN: WEALTH
CREATED BY LABOR.] The natural wealth is the land, wherever it may be in
convenient places, it may always provide one or more resources of income
in exchange for the application and expense of strength or skill of
labor upon it. The artificial wealth includes all capital, whatever it
may be, it is capital, if it can assist the labor energy to double,
triple or multiple the income and profit, drawn from the natural
resource to which the labor-strength is applied. The rentable house or
any other building is artificial wealth. And it is also a source of
income to its owner who, by a use of skill and by an application of
labor energy, can make his source of income give a multiple yield, in
return for the expense of his personal strength upon it.
Thus, the indirect and direct resources of a propertied person,
therefore, are always many and complete when he works out the wealth
himself. [SN: COMPLETE AND INCOMPLETE INCOMES OF PROPERTY OWNERS.] By
complete I mean this, that whatever his intelligence and strength can
draw out of the source they are applied to, it is always his and is
always to his benefit. An incomplete income or yield from a source of
wealth, to its owner, will be this, that, if he hires the energy, or the
skill of another person to apply upon his property, then his income is
incomplete, because he has to pay for the hired labor energy as well as
for hired skill. In this way an owner of wealth of any kind may even
divide the yield and the product of the source of income into halves.
But as long as a person is an owner of wealth, an owner of capital, and
an owner of physical and mental energy, he is a possessor of [SN:
PROPERTY GUARANTY OF LIFE.] resources; his labor energy and his
existence are then fully guaranteed for himself, his wife, and children
by his wealth, because wealth or property becomes a direct source of
income, when he himself labors on it, and an indirect, when he rents it
to others. A propertied man, therefore, is safe forever by the resources
of his property, which yield incomes and profits for sustenance of the
highest possible life, highest education, freedom, and enjoyment.
But what about the propertyless man? How many resources, or how many
sources of income [SN: HAS THE PROPERTYLESS ANY SOURCE OF INCOME, ETC.?]
has he for his own life, the life of his wife and children? What sources
of income has he for education, for bread and butter, for clothes and
dress, for their shelter and his own? What resources has he for his
sustenance in this world, when the entire world tends rapidly to be the
property of a very few persons?
He has neither land, nor capital, nor house; he has neither natural, nor
artificial wealth to serve him, and hence, has not a single one of the
above described sources of [SN: THE PROPERTYLESS HIMSELF IS A SOURCE OF
MULTIPLE EXPENSE.] income and profit which the Creator provided for
man’s enjoyment. On the contrary, the propertyless man himself is a
source of multiple expense; he has but a store of labor energy within
himself, which store must be supported by its own effort, and that too
while his life is guaranteed by nothing but by his physical strength and
natural mind. And it is only these two that unite to support him who is
the single source of the following manifold expenses in favor of many
owners of properties and wealth, who sometimes make enormous fortunes by
the efforts of the propertyless.
If a propertyless man desires to exist at all in the sight of his God in
this quasi-civilized world, he must spend his life in the following
ways:
1. He must pay from it for a shelter to one or another property owner,
when this owner has a rentable house, which house serves as a source of
income and profit to the owner. So that the tenant of his house becomes
a permanent resource for the owner’s well-being, because he cannot avoid
paying rent to the one or the other.
2. He must pay for his clothes to another property owner or an owner of
wealth, who gets income and profit from selling the [SN: EXPENSES FOR
CLOTHES, ETC.] goods, and who gets incomes and profits for making and
producing the goods. And as a consumer, the propertyless man is relied
upon as a source of income by these owners of wealth, and hence, he is a
resource of their own well-being. He must also pay for laundry to
another owner of wealth and must be a real source of income and profit
for him, because he too is a propertied man and has many resources for
life.
3. He must pay for his board, whether in a boarding house or in a
restaurant, it makes some difference; but by boarding in either [SN:
EXPENSES FOR NOURISHMENT.] one or the other, he must be a source of
income and profit to servants and waiters every day, and to a crowd of
owners of wealth who are ever ready to draw all from him they can. But
if he boards in the house he rents, and if his wife performs the
domestic duties in his case, then the expense of his life is reduced
through this channel in favor of the wife. Nevertheless, he must
continue to be a source of income in favor of the butcher, the baker and
grocer, and some other propertied men who derive their profits from him
at a certain per cent in the way of his nourishment.
4. The propertyless man is another source of expense in favor of the
support of the general government of the nation, a state government, a
county government, and perhaps a municipal one. And he [SN: EXPENSES FOR
GOVERNMENT, ETC.] pays the taxes in the prices of the goods and clothing
he wears; in the prices of food and the drinks he consumes,—these
expenses make him a sure source of income to many other owners of
wealth, and so on. And to this channel of drain must be added his
expenses for education, for different asylums, for churches and other
institutions; expenses for the books and newspapers he reads; expenses
for the carfare, etc., he cannot avoid; expenses for the physicians he
is cured by, and the drugs his strength is invigorated with, and so on.
Thus every one of these propertied persons obtains his own percentage of
income from the resourceless man. And certainly there are many other
channels of expense for him in the society he comes into contact with.
It is really impossible to number here even the unavoidable expenses of
the propertyless man.
It is then in the above directions that the physical and mental energy
must run out of the propertyless person. And of course it runs out in
the form of currency or the money by which he pays for shelter, for
clothing, etc., for services [SN: HIS ENERGY IS DRAINED BY THE
PROPERTIED MEN.] and all utilities, to the owners of wealth. But, if the
propertyless man himself is only a source to be drained by the others,
and if he has neither land, nor capital, nor any other natural or
artificial wealth to draw an income from, then his very strength is good
for nothing. For the strength itself can neither be eaten nor can he pay
with it any one who has the right to draw on it. His energy must,
therefore, be first exchanged either for money or for some other
utilities of value which are derived out of wealth, out of property that
he does not possess. How then can this persistently drained source
become filled or supplied again? Where is the resource of his own
income? Surely he can not exist without one at least. And, being
propertyless, he naturally does not have even the single one outside of
himself. Yet he has to live from without or he must die of starvation
from within.
Now, the only chance for the propertyless man to live is to go again to
an owner of wealth, and to hire some one or another resource [SN: HE MAY
HAVE BUT ONE CHANCE FOR A PAYMENT.] of income from him and to apply his
energy to it, paying for the permission. Again paying, paying is the
only hope for the propertyless man. And this is the most important point
after all, because he must pay even for the application of his personal
energy to all natural and artificial resources of wealth, or income. Has
any one understood what it means—to pay for an application of labor
energy to wealth that the merciful Creator provided for man? I am sure
that the politico-economists do not understand it. A few of them hit
this point, sometimes, but unconsciously, without conceiving its
significance.
The propertyless person, then, who is drained in all directions, and who
has but one chance to restore his expended energy from a single source
of income—this man again becomes an additional source of expense in
favor of an owner of wealth, an additional source of income and profit
to propertied men.
But where, and how, can this unfortunate creature of God, this multiple
source of income and profit for men, further pay and expend his
strength, for becoming a still further source of income in favor of the
propertied men?
This question, after the four previously explained series of drains of
the propertyless man, demands the next point.
5. The propertyless man can not even make himself the source of income
and profit to others without paying an exorbitant price for it to an
owner of wealth. If, for instance, he labors for wages, his employer and
others finally obtain from 25 to 50 or 75 per cent or even more profit
out of the results of his labor. If he works on a farm, in a plant, or
any other wealth [SN: HIS EXPENSES FOR EMPLOYMENT IN ANY SPHERE.] with
capital, or works in making capital, he must in any way divide the
results of his work between the owner of wealth and himself. His portion
is usually paid by time in money, as wages, as a salary, or in some
other way; while the whole result of his work remains, and is dispensed
by the owner of wealth who is profited by him. If the propertyless
person serves to an owner of wealth as a clerk, a bookkeeper, salesman,
or in any other capacity, he cannot serve unless he or she is a
profitable source of income to the propertied master who gives him the
chance to supply his ever drained source of multiple expenses. If,
further, the propertyless man leases a farm or any other wealth of a
propertied person, he has always to divide the results of his labor
between himself and the owner of wealth. Whereas, if the owner of it
himself labors on his wealth, then, the whole result of his toil must
remain as a reward to himself. And there is the difference: The tenant
or the lessee is obliged to labor twice as hard as the propertied man in
order to derive so much income for himself, as the owner of wealth can
derive by working half as hard; and that is because the owner of
property is drawing all income of his labor for himself, while the
propertyless man is drawing income for himself and for the propertied
man, to whom the former is a source of income by paying rent. If,
finally, the propertyless man labors upon a rentable source of income,
and then borrows money for improvements, in addition to the paying for
that source, he thereby makes himself a source of income in favor of the
creditor, by paying per cents for the loan; and, consequently, he must
divide the results of his toil between himself and between two owners of
wealth. The improvements, being a capital, must aid him to produce more
wealth than he can produce without it; but the high rate of percentage
which exists in America must surely ruin the debtor, because per cents
in favor of lenders of money, etc., generally run from 6 to 12 per cent
per annum; and in some cases the money sharks obtain even from 15 to 18
per cent.
What then are the advantages of the propertied person and the
disadvantages of the propertyless man?
From the preceding it is clearly seen that both men are on an equality
merely in the physical energy. And the propertied person has an absolute
advantage for developing his mental energy or skill. We [SN: ADVANTAGES
AND DISADVANTAGES.] have, therefore, to regard their physical energy as
an equal in both. But, with the propertied man, this energy is
surrounded by multiple resources of income; so that to whatever resource
he applies his energy, it always yields him the whole results of his
labor. An application of capital in his power multiplies the yield in
his favor. An application of the hired labor energy still farther
multiplies the yield and increases his income. His [SN: A PROPERTIED IS
A MAN OF MULTIPLE INCOMES.] physical energy, therefore, must be regarded
as a source of multiple income even in relation to a small amount of
wealth or income-bearing property.[53] On the contrary, when there is
plenty of employment, the energy of the propertyless person is itself a
source of multiple expense in favor of the propertied men. And again,
[SN: A PROPERTYLESS IS A MAN OF MULTIPLE EXPENSES.] when there is
employment, he is permitted to apply his energy but to a single resource
of income; and when permitted to do so, the propertyless man can only
draw about half the income that this resource can yield to his energy,
while the other half of it must go to the multiple incomes of the
propertied men who employ him as the people call it. Hence, being
surrounded with the inexhaustible wealth of nature, with innumerable
resources of income, the propertyless man is only a semi-sourced man—a
man of semi-sourced income. He is a man who is entitled to a portion of
the yield, for the expense of energy which is equal to two or more
portions of it. And there is nothing more in the whole realm of wealth
than a semi-income from one source for the man who himself is a source
of multiple expenses in the favor of many owners of wealth. A greater
injustice than this could not be fabricated by mankind under the
heavens.
But what about the propertyless, when there is no employment at all? Or,
when the caprice of the propertied is not satisfied by the halves of the
yields produced by the [SN: PROPERTYLESS OUT OF EMPLOYMENT.] labor
energy and skill of the propertyless people? What, when they demand
still more impossible efficiency in product from the emaciated energy of
their victims? The answer is clear and but one. These economic slaves,
these victims of the greatest injustice and absurdity are thrown back by
thousands into the sphere of humiliation under public relief. And who
constitutes this public? Nearly all the same propertyless millions, who
relieve the others, when they themselves are not yet on the point of
starvation.
And who is after all accused? Who is searched? Whose character and
history of life is mercilessly scrutinized at the bars of charity? [SN:
HE IS REGARDED AS INFERIOR.] Again the same propertyless victims, the
same economic slaves, whose lives have been spent in working for the
owners of wealth, owners of property, of fortunes.
It is certainly not with Japan, nor even civilized England, where
primogeniture persists to reign, and where the hereditary noblemen [SN:
PRINCIPLES OF INJUSTICE.] equally continue to suck the energy of the
British and Irish people and of the peoples of their colonies that we
have to deal with. “In 1891 Great Britain and Ireland had had nearly
6,000,000 propertyless families[54];” and they have been accustomed for
centuries to spend more than half of their energy in favor of the lords
of property, who are the lords of nearly all resources of wealth in
Britain and in many other parts of the world. But we have to deal with
the people of the United States, whose fathers tried by all means to
escape the influence of primogeniture, and whose children have now
reached the same economic [SN: DIVIDOGENESURE.] condition of slavery,
but under a different title, viz., that of dividogenesure.[55] As its
definition here shows, the principle of dividogenesure involves both the
individual and class dependence of the needy upon the wealthy and
applies to the entire millions of the group of tenant families, as well
as to the group of mortgagor families of the 2d table.[56] For all these
families have been dividing the sole results of their labor or toil, in
one way or another, between themselves and their economic masters that
they wholly or partly depend upon. The subsequent chapters, however,
will better explain the situation of their dependence.
While here we shall but briefly indicate that dividogenesure, as a
principle of tacit reality, separates the people into two classes: 1st,
into individuals of multiple expenditure in each case, but with a
possible semi-income [SN: ECONOMIC CLASSES.] for supplying this
expenditure; and 2d, into individuals of also multiple expenditure for
living, but at the same time of multiple incomes sufficient to leave a
considerable net profit or balance for their future. This balance or
profit, in some cases, gradually amounts to millions of dollars’ worth
of wealth, remultiplying further incomes most rapidly; while the
individuals of the first class become absolutely dependent upon the
second even for the semi-income which may at any time be refused them on
account of too many individuals in need of resources for incomes
belonging to the second class.
And it further follows, that when the resourceless are admitted into the
sphere of dividogenesure, [SN: ONE SPHERE.] then their multiple
expenditure is meagerly supplied. But when they are refused admittance
into this sphere, then their unavoidable fate is starvation or falling
back into the realm of public relief for the unemployed.
As to their fate under the public relief, Dr. Amos G. Warner says: “The
most difficult [SN: CHARITIES ANOTHER SPHERE.] problem in the whole
realm of poor-relief is this of Providing for the unemployed. England
has worked at it intermittently from the time of Elizabeth” (1558-1603)
up to date without success. For there were more than 30-millions of
individuals without property in Great Britain and Ireland, when Dr.
Warner was writing, and he continued as follows:
“The most careful investigation made in this country regarding enforced
idleness was probably that conducted by the Massachusetts Bureau of
Labor during the [SN: LOSS OF TIME.] depression of 1885. There were
during that year in Massachusetts 816,470 persons engaged in gainful
occupations; of these 241,589 were unemployed during part of the year.
The time lost, if we consider only the principal occupation of each
individual, was 82,744 years; but many persons, when unable to work at
their principal occupation, had some subsidiary work. Making the proper
deductions for the time thus put in, the net absolute loss of
working-time amounted to 78,717.76 years. * * * Averaged among those who
lost a certain amount of time, the loss per man was 3.91 months.”[57] or
nearly four months.
This description shows the absolute helplessness of the resourceless
people in the State of Massachusetts alone, while there were 48 other
States and Territories besides Massachusetts in this country. In [SN:
LOSS OF MONEY.] all these States and Territories, therefore, not only
millions of years of working-time must have been lost during the
depression of 1882 to 1885, but millions of dollars of public and
private money was unproductively spent for the relief of the
propertyless from starvation, cold and from other distresses. And after
all, that was a comparatively mild reality. For the same Dr. Warner
further writes:
“This present chapter passes from my hand in March, 1894, when special
relief-work for the unemployed is being carried forward on a _scale
never before known or [SN: HOMELESS CONSTANT FACTOR.] needed in this
country_.[58] It is therefore not possible to give the results of this
emergency work.” * * * But the relief must be given. “The present
chapter is concerned especially with _the problem of the homeless poor
as a constant factor in the administration of charities_.[59] The
question of how to deal with the tramp is said to be of special urgency
in every locality in the United States with which I am at all
acquainted. From Boston to San Francisco, and from St. Paul to New
Orleans, complaints come of a number of tramps, which is alleged to be
‘especially’ large in each case.”[60]
In fact, Dr. Warner’s book of more than 400 pages is one that represents
the saddest spectacle [SN: TWO SISTERS OF INIQUITY.] of human misery on
the largest scale. It treats all possible causes of the misery,
excepting the main, and all-powerful, cause of all the minor causes,
which I have named dividogenesure, because it is the sister of
primogeniture, the one being as iniquitous for millions of families as
the other.
As a universally pernicious principle, dividogenesure is always working
in behalf of a few favorites. It has always been unjust to the
employees, even when those [SN: IMPLIES DEGREES OF INJUSTICE.] favorites
commanded an equal number of places of employment to the number of the
employees in a nation, because the latter have always been obliged to
divide the results of their toil at an unjust rate of per cent with the
former. The injustice of dividogenesure, however, intensifies as soon as
the number of the employees becomes greater than the number of the
places of employment, and this injustice grows especially intense when
these employees appear to be the propertyless individuals. And when a
nation has so many propertyless individuals as to outnumber by millions
the places of employment, then, the great injustice of dividogenesure
changes into the very foundation of iniquity. For its favorites, then,
make all possible devices, like the blanks with tens of scrutinizing
questions, and other humiliating devices for the purpose of selecting
the most efficient applicants for employment at the cheapest possible
rates of payment. Thus, the employed ones become harder and harder
economic slaves of these favorites, while the unemployed are cast out of
the sphere of the slavery without bread, etc., into the sphere of
starvation and the public relief.
Further, dividogenesure is not a system of ordinary slavery, where the
slaves are dependent upon their masters for living and dying. It is not
the slavery that imposes a moral obligation upon the masters [SN: IT IS
NOT AN ORDINARY SLAVERY.] in favor of the slaves who are subject to
them. No, no, dividogenesure has made millions of families absolutely
dependent on its favorites, but it has removed from these favorites all
moral obligations in favor of the modern economic slaves. The modern
master of hundreds of the slaves can extort the last inch of labor
energy from each of them, and yet can live in perfect peace under the
shield of dividogenesure without responsibility and without the
slightest remorse of conscience. He does not compel any of the slaves to
make applications for employment, for working out his wealth and
fortune. But he knows very well that there are invisible, omnipotent and
omnipresent forces, [SN: UNSEEN FORCES.] namely: Hunger and thirst, or
the multiple expenditure in every individual case, which mightily push
the slaves to his commanding mastership. And the only duty
dividogenesure bids him to perform, is to choose the most efficient
applicants for the lowest pay, as they would seem to be the most
profitable for himself. As to the rejected ones, it is neither his
business nor his duty to care whether they live or perish by fire, by
cold, by disease, wither away or starve to death.