The American Empire Part 10

_Total Estimated Wealth_

_Amount_ (000,000 _Per Cent_ _Wealth Groups_ _Omitted_) _of Total_

1. Real Property (land and buildings) $110,676 59

2. Public Utilities (railroads, street railways, telegraph, telephone, electric light, etc.) 26,415 14

3. Live Stock and Machinery (live stock, farm implements and manufacturing machinery) 13,697 7

4. Raw Materials, Manufactured Products, Merchandise (including gold and silver bullion) 24,193 13

5. Personal Possessions (clothing, personal adornments, furniture, carriages, etc.) 12,758 7

Total of all groups $187,739 100

The bulk of the exchangeable wealth of the United States consists of "productive" or "investment" property. If, to the total of 110 billions given by the Census as the value of real property, are added the real property values of the public utilities, the total will probably exceed three quarters of the total wealth of the United States. If, in addition, account is taken of the fact that much of the wealth cla.s.sed as "raw materials, etc.," is the immediate product of the land (coal, ore, timber), some idea may be obtained of the extent to which the estimated wealth of the country is in the form of land, its immediate products, and buildings. Furthermore, it must be remembered that great quant.i.ties of ore lands, timber lands, waterpower sites, etc., are a.s.sessed at only a fraction of their total present value.

The personal property of the country is valued at less than one fourteenth of the total wealth. It is in reality a negligible item, as compared with the value of the real property, of the public utilities, and of the raw materials and products of industry.

The wealth of the United States is in permanent form--land and improvements; personal possessions are a mere incident in the total. In truth, American wealth is in the main productive (business) wealth, designed for the further production of goods, rather than for the satisfaction of human wants.

3. _Ownership and Control_

Who owns this vast wealth? It is impossible to answer the question with anything like definiteness. Figures have been compiled to show that five per cent of the people own two-thirds to three-quarters of it; that the poorest two-thirds of the people own five per cent of it, and that the well-to-do or middle cla.s.s own the remainder. These figures would make it appear that more than one-fourth of the population is in the middle cla.s.s. If the income-tax returns are to be trusted this proportion is far too high. On all hands it is admitted that the wealth of the country is concentrated in the hands of a small fraction of the people and the important wealth--that is, the wealth upon which production, transportation and exchange depends--is in still fewer hands.

Neither the total wealth of the country, nor that portion of the total which is owned directly by the propertied cla.s.s is of most immediate moment. Ownership does not necessarily involve control. A puddler in the Gary Mills may own five shares of stock in the Steel Corporation without ever raising his voice to determine the corporation policy. This is ownership without control. On the other hand, a banking house through a voting trust agreement, may control the policy of a corporation in which it does not own one per cent of the stock. This is control without ownership. Ownership may be quite incidental. It is control that counts in terms of power.

Most of the property owners in the United States play no part in the control of prices or of production, in the direction of economic policy, or in the management of economic affairs.

Theoretically, stockholders direct the policies of corporations, and, therefore, each holder of 5 or 10 shares of corporate stock would play a part in deciding economic affairs. Practically, the small stockholder has no part in business control.

The small farmer--the small business man of largest numerical consequence--has been exploited by the great interests for two generations. Despite his numbers and his organizations, despite his frequent efforts, through anti-trust laws, railway control laws, banking reform laws, and the like, he has little voice in determining important economic policies.

The small savings bank depositor or the holder of an ordinary insurance policy is a negative rather than a positive factor in economic control.

Not only does he exercise no power over the dollar which he has placed with the bank or with the insurance company, but he has thereby strengthened the hands of these organizations. Each dollar placed with the financier is a dollar's more power for him and his.

Suppose--the impossible--that half of the families in the United States "own property." Subtract from this number the small stockholders; the holders of bonds, notes and mortgages; the small tradesman; the small farmer; the home owner and the owner of a savings-bank deposit or of an insurance policy--what remains? There are the large stockholders, the owners and directors of important industries, public utilities, banks, trust companies and insurance companies. These persons, in the aggregate, const.i.tute a fraction of one per cent of the adult population of the United States.

Start with the total non-personal wealth of the country, subtract from it the share-values of the small stockholders; the values of all bonds, mortgages and notes; the property of the small tradesman and the small farmer; the value of homes--what remains? There are left the stocks in the hands of the big stockholders; the properties owned and directed by the owners and directors of important industries, public utilities, banks, trust companies and insurance companies. This wealth in the aggregate probably makes up less than 10 per cent of the total wealth of the country and yet the tiny fraction of the population which owns this wealth can exercise a dictatorial control over the economic policies that underlie American public life.

4. _The Avenues of Mastery_

While control rests back directly or indirectly upon some form of ownership, most owners exercise little or no control over economic affairs. Instead they are made the victims of a social system under which one group lives at the expense of another.

Against this tendency toward control by one group or cla.s.s (usually a minority) over the lives of another group or cla.s.s (usually a majority) the human spirit always has revolted. The United States in its earlier years was an embodiment of the spirit of that revolt. President Wilson characterized it excellently in 1916. Speaking of the American Flag, he said,--"That flag was originally stained in very precious blood, blood spilt, not for any dynasty, nor for any small controversies over national advantage, but in order that a little body of three million men in America might make sure that no man was their master."[40]

Against mastery lovers of liberty protest. Mastery means tyranny; mastery means slavery.

Mastery has always been based upon some form of ownership. There is in the United States a group, growing in size, of people who take more in keep than they give in service; people who own land; franchises; stocks and bonds and mortgages; real estate and other forms of investment property; people who are living without ever lifting a finger in toil, or giving anything in labor for an unceasing stream of necessaries, comforts and luxuries. These people, directly or indirectly, are the owners of the productive machinery of the United States.

Historically there have been a number of stages in the development of mastery. First, there was the ownership of the body. One man owned another man, as he might own a house or a pile of hides. At another stage, the owner of the land--the feudal baron or the landlord--said to the tenant, who worked on his land: "You stay on my land. You toil and work and make bread and I will eat it." The present system of mastery is based on the ownership by one group of people, of the productive wealth upon which depends the livelihood of all. The masters of present day economic society have in their possession the natural resources, the tools, the franchises, patents, and the other phases of the modern industrial system with which the people must work in order to live. The few who own and control the productive wealth have it in their power to say to the many who neither own nor control,--"You may work or you may not work." If the ma.s.ses obtain work under these conditions the owners can say to them further,--"You work, and toil and earn bread and we will eat it." Thus the few, deriving their power from the means by which their fellows must work for a living, own the jobs.

5. _The Mastery of Job-Ownership_

Job-ownership is the foundation of the latest and probably the most complete system of mastery ever perfected. The slave was held only in physical bondage. Behind serfdom there was land ownership and a religious sanction. "Divine right" and "G.o.d's anointed," were terms used to bulwark the position of the owning cla.s.s, who made an effort to dominate the consciences as well as the bodies of their serfs.

Job-ownership owes its effectiveness to a subtle, psychological power that overwhelms the unconscious victim, making him a tool, at once easy to handle and easy to discard.

The system of private ownership that succeeded Feudalism taught the lesson of economic ambition so thoroughly that it has permeated the whole world. The conditions of eighteenth century life have pa.s.sed, perhaps forever, but its psychology lingers everywhere.

The job-holder has been taught that he must "get ahead" in the world; that if he practices the economic virtues,--thrift, honesty, earnestness, persistence, efficiency--he will necessarily receive great economic reward; that he must support his family on the standard set by the community, and that to do all of these essential things, he must take a job and hold on to it. Having taken the job, he finds that in order to hold it, he must be faithful to the job-owner, even if that involves faithlessness to his own ideas and ideals, to his health, his manhood, and the lives of his wife and children.

The driving power in slavery was the lash. Under serfdom it was the fear of hunger. The modern system of job-ownership owes its effectiveness to the fact that it has been built upon two of the most potent driving forces in all the world--hunger and ambition--the driving force that comes from the empty stomach and the driving force that comes from the desire for betterment. Thus job-owning, based upon an automatic self-drive principle, enables the job-owner to exact a return in faithful service that neither slavery nor serfdom ever made possible.

Job-owning is thus the most thorough-going form of mastery yet devised by the ingenuity of man.

Unlike the slave owner and the Feudal lord the modern job-owner has no responsibility to the job-holder. The slave owner must feed, clothe and house his slave--otherwise he lost his property. The Feudal lord must protect and a.s.sist his tenant. That was a part of his bargain with his overlord. The modern job-owner is at liberty, at any time, to "discharge" the job-holder, and by throwing him out of work take away his chance of earning a living. While he keeps the job-holder on his payroll, he may pay him impossibly low wages and overwork him under conditions that are unfit for the maintenance of decent human life.

Barring the factory laws and the health laws, he is at liberty to impose on the job-holder any form of treatment that the job-holder will tolerate.

There is no limit to the amount of industrial property that one man may own. Therefore, there is no limit to the number of jobs he may control.

It is possible (not immediately likely) that one coterie of men might secure possession of enough industrial property to control the jobs of all of the gainfully occupied people in American industry. If this result could be achieved, these tens of millions would be able to earn a living only in case the small coterie in control permitted them to do so.

Job ownership is built, of necessity, on the ownership of land, resources, capital, credit, franchises, and other special privileges.

But its power of control goes far beyond this mere physical ownership into the realms of social psychology.

The early colonists, who fled from the economic, political, social and religious tyranny of feudalism, believed that liberty and freedom from unjust mastery lay in the private ownership of the job. They had no thought of the modern industrial machine.

The abolitionists who fought slavery believed that freedom and liberty could be obtained by unshackling the body. They did not foresee the shackled mind.

The modern world, seeking freedom; yearning for liberty and justice; aiming at the overthrow of the mastery that goes with irresponsible power, finds to its dismay that the ownership of the job carries with it, not only economic mastery, but political, social and even religious mastery, as well.

6. _The Ownership of the Product_

The industrial overlord holds control of the job with one hand. With the other he controls the product of industry. From the time the raw material leaves the earth in the form of iron ore, crude petroleum, logs, or coal, through all of the processes of production, it is owned by the industrial master, not by the worker. Workers separate the product from the earth, transport it, refine it, fabricate it. Always, the product, like the machinery, is the possession of the owning cla.s.s.

While industry was compet.i.tive, the pressure of compet.i.tion kept prices at a cost level, and the exploiting power of the owner was confined to the job-holder. To-day, through combinations and consolidations, industry has ceased to be compet.i.tive, and the exploiting power of the job-owner is extended through his ownership of the product.

The modern town-dweller is almost wholly in the hands of the private owners of the products upon which he depends. The ordinary city dweller spends two-fifths of his income for food; one-fifth for rent, fuel and light, and one-fifth for clothes. Food, houses, fuel (with the exception of gas supply in some cities), and clothing are privately owned. The public ownership of streets and water works, of some gas, electricity, street cars, and public markets, is a negligible factor in the problem.

The private monopolist has the upper hand and he is able through the control of transportation, storage, and merchandising facilities, to make handsome profits for the "service" which he renders the consumer.

7. _The Control of the Surplus_

The wealth owners are doubly entrenched. They own the jobs upon which most families depend for a living. They own the necessaries of life which most families must purchase in order to live. Further, they control the surplus wealth of the community.