Let there be no charities, and no studies with a view to public hygiene. For it is the support of the poor, and the prevention of pestilence and famine and epidemics, that will hasten the dreadful day when the strong will struggle with the weak for a morsel of food-the strong getting the morsel and the weak growing weaker from hunger.

Such a political economy is not only dismal, but it is subversion of all moral ideals of the race of men. No thorofare to civilization on that road; only retrogression to savagery; for it says that "vice and crime are beneficent checks to the increase of population"!

People of this generation need not be told that the one hundred years following the publication, in 1798, of the Malthusian doctrine of overpopulation was a progressive demonstration of its falsity; for it was found that food increased in a geometric ratio, while population fell to an arithmetric ratio, on the whole, in the most highly civilized populations, as in France and generally in families of wealth and nobility.

Then there was another dismal doctrine—a theory of rent, advanced by Ricardo about the year 1820. The richest soils are first taken possession of by man; the less fertile soils later when the rich lands have all been taken up. Then rent begins; the rich soils demand enough rent to make up the difference in value of crops between them and the poorer lands, which may be had free by the people who will take them. By and by all the rich soils will be occupied-and all the poor soils, too, for that matter—and human labor will be rewarded by a continually decreasing product of food and creature comforts.

This Ricardian view assisted Malthusianism in discrediting the ideas of a Christian civilization that sent out its devoted missionaries, "from Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand," to deliver the lower and lowest races from error and superstition, and all manner of savagery. At home this Christian civilization preached other-worldliness; and if it practiced worldliness, it did it in the name of other-worldliness. And what has been the verdict of the century following Ricardo? An age of rapid transportation has followed an age of exploration and discovery. We have learned that the soils of northern Europe, of which Ricardo wrote as the rich soils first taken possession of, are as nothing in the matter of fertility to the soils of the tropical regions as yet scarcely occupied by man. The Amazon valley, with its two million square miles, alone, when cultivated to its full capacity, will supply ten times the food and clothing needed by the present population of the entire globe.

The age of machinery has come upon us—a new Avatar succeeding upon the Avatar of hard labor and physical drudgery; and men are called up higher into directive power out of mere muscular labor. The intelligent mind armed with science the tools of the mind—is commanding the forces of nature; the elemental powers of heat and electricity, reinforcing the bodily force of man by multipliers of ten, one hundred, one thousand; annihilating, by commerce and its means of transportation, the intervals of distance that

separate man from man in space to such an extent that food, clothing, and shelter come everywhere they are wanted; and a myriad of natural productions that were formerly not property, but only a useless incumbrance where nature had placed them, now by transportation become real wealth to the distant people who need them. ·

At the beginning of the nineteenth century political economy was a dismal science. At the end of the nineteenth century everybody is buoyant with hope, so far as food, clothing, and shelter are concerned; a plenty is in sight even for the poorest races of mankind, and possibilities of migration are right at hand for any countries that are really overpopulated. Gladstone estimated in 1870 that labor-saving machinery was doubling the world's production of wealth once every seven years. Eight millions of laborers in Great Britain, armed by machinery, were at that time producing as much as one or two hundred millions of laborers of the entire world at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This was the cheerful response of political economy at the end of the nineteenth century to the dismal Sphinx-riddle propounded by Malthus and Ricardo at the beginning of that century.

Altho there are dismal enough doctrines preached even at the end of that century, they are not doctrines of starvation, but only of relative poverty with plenty to eat and wear. Luxury and an abundance of creature comforts, it says, shall be forbidden to the poor household. Henry George thought that the persistence of poverty in the midst of advancing wealth is due to private ownership of land. But careful investigation has shown that the rental of land in the United States is a small burden, only one-eighteenth of the annual earnings of the people in 1880-two and one-fifth cents per day, as against an actual average production of more than forty cents a day for each inhabitant. A grain of economy or thrift on the part of individuals will compensate for all the rental of land in the United States. Even in Great Britain the land value had not doubled in eighty years, altho the values of other property-houses and machinery and means of transportation, and creature comforts-had increased seven times.

Land for the purposes of mere agriculture is everywhere cheap; it is only for building purposes that land commands a high price. The land on which New York city stands is worth one-seventh of all the land in the United States. The same amount of acreage on a rich borderland can be had for thirty thousand dollars, but the land of New York city is assessed at three billion dollars, and is worth much more in market; it is worth one hundred thousand times as much per acre for international business purposes as for mere agricultural land without a city market near by for its produce.

Karl Marx, the father of recent socialism, in his famous work on Capital, about 1870, wrote the German words which I translate as follows: "Along with the constantly diminishing number of great capitalists who monopolize the instruments of production, there is a constantly increasing mass of misery, oppression, bondage, deformity, and extortion." But this law of Karl Marx,

which has been adopted by Henry George in the terse form of the epigram, "The rich are growing richer, and the poor are growing poorer," has not been found to be valid even in England, where Marx made his generalization; for the income-tax returns showed in 1885 that the class of the very poor had decreased by the transfer of a large number to the lower middle class, which lower middle class was nearly three and one-half times as large in each million of the population as it had been thirty years before. The same transference of the lower middle class into the higher middle class had been going on, and from the higher middle class to the wealthy class, and so on to the very wealthy class, so that there were three times as many in each of the higher classes per million as thirty years before.1 And the average earnings of the lowest class, that of people who get less than $750 per family and do not pay an income tax, had nearly doubled in thirty years (it had been $265 in 1851, and had risen to $415 in 1881). It had increased whether measured in money or in the comforts of life that can be bought for the increased wages.

The question of present annual earnings, in the form of wages, salaries, or profits from a business, is only a single one of the many items that have to be considered in the year's income. There goes down from the savings of a people a certain amount of wealth from one year to another and from one generation to another. The people that come after do not have to earn this money over again, but they have the annual use and benefit of it as an inheritance. Thus the previous generations, in so far as they were thrifty and accumulated property in the form of permanent improvements, assist the later generations to live. Public buildings, business houses, and dwelling-houses belong to this kind of property; also highways, bridges, railroads, canals, waterworks, sewers, ships and steamboats, etc. The rental of these buildings and the use of the railways as a means of transportation, as well as the improvements on the farms, appear in the annual output of productions; but the actual rental value of the dwelling-houses is a separate affair, and must be added to the bulk of productions as tho it were actual earnings for the year. The growth of the United States in production has been carefully estimated and re-estimated by the directors of the United States census. The bulk of the wealth transmitted from year to year did not amount to any considerable sum until after the introduction of steam navigation on rivers, lakes, and the ocean, and after the first building of railroads. This had begun and was an appreciable item by 1850, when the valuation of the United States was reckoned at 7 billions of dollars. In the decade 1850 to 1860 this had increased to 16 billions; in twenty years-that is, by 1870-to 30 billions; in 1880, to 44 billions; in

1 See Leoni Levi, Wages and Earnings of the Working Classes (London: John Murray, 1885), pp. 48 and 58; also see Robert Giffen, The Progress of the Working Classes, "Economic Tracts" No. 16 (New York).

Leoni Levi reports incomes from $750 to $1,500 in 1880 as three and one-half times as many as in 1850; incomes of $1,500 to $2,500, three times as many; incomes of $2,500 to $5,000, two and one-half times as many; incomes of $5,000 to $10,000, two and one-half times as many; incomes of $10,000 to $15,000, two and three-quarter times as many. The laboring class, whose annual incomes are less than $750, averaged $265 in 1851, and in 1881, $415. One hundred and eighty thousand of these had ascended to the class of incomes between $750 and $1,500, during the thirty years after 1850.

1890, to 65 billions; in 1900 it is estimated by some at 94 billions of dollars. The average amount of property in 1850 for each inhabitant was therefore $308; in 1860, $514; in 1870, $780; in 1880, $870; in 1890, $1,036; in 1900, $1,235.1

This property, which is transferred from one generation to another, consisting of the machinery of production, and of improved farms, city buildings lots and buildings, includes nearly all of the taxable property in a community, and it will be seen at a glance what a difference in that power which capital gives there is in the United States owing to increase of the taxable wealth of 1850 over that of 1900. The taxable wealth of 1900 is $1,235 per individual inhabitant, while that of 1850 was only $308. The individual of 1900 is represented by four times as much realized wealth, and therefore can bear a burden of taxation equal to four times that of 1850 with greater ease, because the larger the income from vested property, the greater the tax possible without stinting the individual in his necessities.

In 1880, after studying the census and such other sources of information as then were accessible as to the earnings and taxable property of the United States and Great Britain, I constructed a table stating as nearly as I could ascertain the actual annual income of the nation from various sources for the

years 1850 and 1880. When the census report of 1890 had become available in 1895 and 1896, I continued the comparison so as to include 1890. It is not yet quite time to construct such a table for the year 1900, but two of the three most important items have been accessible for some time, and I have partially reconstructed my table so as to include 1900 in four of its items, agricultural and manufacturing items being accesssible in the census returns. The items needed are the statistics of the productions of mines, freight by water, fisheries, and a number of small items.

There is no study more illuminating in political economy than the study of the actual earnings of a people in the several classes of productions. The actual total earnings of the United States in 1890 I made to be 51.5 cents per day per inhabitant. This was an increase over the earnings of 1880, which summed up 44.5 cents per day for each person. The earnings for 1850, calculated on the same basis, but with less reliable data to go upon, were 30 cents a day for each person; for 1900, 58.12 cents.

See United States Census for 1890, Wealth, Debt, and Taxation, p. 14.

PER CAPITA WEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES FROM CENSUS REPORTS, 1850-90

I insert the results of my studies in the two tables following:

TABLE I

EARNINGS PER DAY PER INHABITANT OF THE UNITED STATES IN 1900

EARNINGS PER DAY PER INHABITANT OF THE UNITED STATES AT DIFFERENT EPOCHS

A city that has a history extending back for eight generations has accumulated vast property in the way of buildings and improvements, graded streets, sewers, bridges, water-works, etc., and can realize a large sum of money for the support of its city government, charities, schools, etc., from a comparatively small tax rate. In considering school finances, one must remember that the borderland, with the unfinished condition of its public and private property, has by far more needs for taxation for the purpose of public and private improvements than the old and thickly settled states; while, on the other hand, it has a small assessed value to be taxed even for the absolutely necessary expenses of the year, without counting in any investments for new public works. Contrast the city of Boston with St. Louis, Kansas City, or even Chicago. The population of Boston is estimated at 621,000 people for the year 1905; its assessed valuation of all taxable property and its real valuation are the same-one and one-quarter billions of dollars ($1,237,038,851). Chicago has more than three times the population (1,968,800) and less than one-third of the assessed valuation ($411,424,280) of the taxable prop