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The profits of public companies, foreign investments, railways, etc., assessed to income-tax in the United Kingdom in 1890-1 amounted to £127,735,206. The interest payable from public funds (rates and taxes) was, in addition, 49,226,720 ("Inland Revenue. Report," 1892, C-6731).

That these amounts are understated may be inferred from Mr. Mulhall's estimate of the stocks, shares, bonds, etc., held in Great Britain alone, as being worth £3,491,000,000, producing an annual income of upwards of £155,000,000 ("Dictionary of Statistics," p. 256). And Sir Louis Mallet estimates the English income from foreign investments alone at £100,000,000 annually ("National Income and Taxation (Cobden Club) p. 13). Nearly the whole of this vast income may be regarded as being received without any contemporary services rendered in return by the owners as such.

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We have, however, to add the interest on capital employed in private undertakings of manufacture or trade. This is included with wages of superintendence" in business profit, both for the purpose of the income-tax returns and in ordinary speech. Mr. Giffen estimated it in 1884, apart from any earnings of personal service, at £89,000,000 ("Essays in Finance," Vol. II., p. 403).

The total amount of interest cannot therefore be less than £270,000,000. Adding hereto the rent mentioned in the preceding section, we have a total of £490,000,000 for rent and interest together. This estimate receives support from Mr. Giffen's computation that the amount under these heads actually assessed for income-tax was in 1884 £407,000,000 ("Essays in Finance," Vol. II., p. 401). It has often been stated by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue that large amounts of interest escape assessment, and it is well known that much is assessed under other heads.

The following diagram represents the proportion of the nation's income thus claimed from the workers, not in return for any service rendered to the community, but merely as the payment for permission to use the land and the already accumulated capital of the country.

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P.-Total product, £1,350,000,000. R.-Rent, £220,000,000. I.-Interest, £270,000,000.

VII.-PROFITS AND SALARIES.

But those who enjoy the vast unearned income just mentioned cannot all be accurately described as the "idle rich," though they would forego none of it by refusing to work. If they are disposed to increase it by leading active lives, they can do so; and most of them adopt this course to some extent, especially those whose share is insufficient for their desires.*

When the members of this endowed class elect to work, they are able to do so under unusually favorable conditions. Associated with them in this respect are the fortunate possessors of exceptional skill in hand or brain and the owners of literary or commercial monopolies of every kind. These workers often render inestimable service to the community, and they are able to exact in return remuneration proportionate neither to their utility, nor to the cost of their education or training, but to the relative scarcity of the faculty they possess. (See Professor F. A. Walker, "Principles of Political Economy.")

The numbers and total income of this large class cannot be exactly ascertained. It includes workers of all grades, from the exceptionally skilled artizan to the Prime Minister, and from the city clerk to the President of the Royal Academy.

It is convenient, for statistical purposes, to include in it all those who do not belong to the "manual-labor class." So defined, this prosperous body may be estimated to receive for its work about £360,000,000 annually.†

Mr. R. Giffen: total income less rent, interest, and wages of manual-labor class (“ Essays in Finance," Vol. II., p 404)

Mr. Mulhall ditto ("Dictionary of Statistics,' p. 28)....

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313,000,000

350,000,000

Professor A. Marshall: earnings of all above
the manual-labor class ("Report of Indus-
trial Remuneration Conference," p. 194) 300,000,000
Mr. Mulhall income of tradesmen class only
("Dictionary of Statistics,"" p. 246)
Mr. R. Giffen: salaries of superintendence
assessed to income-tax alone (“Essays in
Finance," Vol. II., p. 404)

*

......

244,000,000

180,000,000

As the unearned income is not equally distributed, some of the participants are in comparatively humble circumstances; but it may be observed that the "manuallabor class," or the poor, possess practically none of it, the total capital of savings banks, trade unions, benefit, building, co-operative, and mutual societies of every sort being only £185,036,591 in 1889 according to the Blue Book Report (see Fabian Tract No. 7, "Capital and Land," p. 8, where particulars are given), or less than 2 per cent. of the total accumulated wealth, and about £14 per head of the adult workers in the "manual-labor class," even supposing the whole was owned by members of that class. Against this, too, must be set the debts of the laborers to shopkeepers and others, which amount, in the aggregate, to a considerable sum.

+ Some of this might, from another point of view, be reckoned rather as interest on the cost of education of valuable servants of the community, and accordingly deducted from this total and added to that of interest. In forming this estimate allowance has been made, as in the previous computations, for the increase during the seven or eight years since the estimates quoted were formed.

VIII. THE CLASSES AND THE MASSES.

The total drawn by the legal disposers of what are sometimes called the "three rents" (on land, capital, and ability), amounts, therefore, at present to about eight hundred and fifty million pounds. sterling yearly, or nearly two-thirds of the total produce. The following estimates, framed some years ago, support this view :

818,000,000

Mr. Giffen, "Essays in Finance," Vol. II., p. 467 £720,000,000
Mr. Mulhall," Dictionary of Statistics," p. 246
Professor Leone Levi (King's College, London),

Times, 13th January, 1885..

Professor Alfred Marshall (Camb.), "Report on
Industrial Remuneration Conference," p. 194

753,000,000

675,000,000

The manual-labor class receives, on the other hand, for all its

millions of workers, only some five hundred millions sterling:

Mr. Giffen, "Essays in Finance," Vol. II., p. 467

Mr. Mulhall, "Dictionary of Statistics," p. 246

Mr. J. S. Jeans, "Statistical Society's Journal,"
Vol. XLVII., p. 631

Prof. Leone Levi (as above)
Prof. A. Marshall (as above).....

550,000,000

447,000,000

600,000,000

521,000,000

500,000,000*

P.

W.

P.-Total produce .......

W.-Income of manual-labor class

Income of the legal proprietors of the three

£1,350,000,000 500,000,000

natural monopolies of land, capital, and ability £850,000,000t

* These estimates, which are based on average rates of wages, multiplied by the number of workers, assume, however, reasonable regularity of employment, and take no account of the fact that much of the total amount of nominal wages is reclaimed from the workers in the shape of ground rent. Much must, therefore, be deducted to

obtain their real net remuneration.

In this connexion it may be mentioned that the total income of the charities of the United Kingdom, including endowments, amounts to £10,040,000, or little over I per cent. of the foregoing total. £2,040,000 of this, it may be added, is expended upon Bible societies alone (Mulhall, " Dictionary of Statistics," p. 78). The total cost of poor relief in 1890-1 was £10,565,756 (Statistical Abstract-C. 6718).

IX. THE Two NATIONS.

This unequal division of the fruits of the combined labor of the working community divides us, as Lord Beaconsfield said, into "two nations," widely different from each other in education, in comfort, and in security. There is some limited central territory between, and some luckier few escape from the large camp in which their fellows are toiling to the more comfortable fortress of the monopolists, from which, on the other hand, others sink into destitution from extravagance or misfortune. But for the great majority the lines between these two nations are practically impassable.

It is not that this division is based on any essential differences in the industry or morality between individuals.

"Since the human race has no means of enjoyable existence, or of existence at all, but what it derives from its own labor and abstinence, there would be no ground for complaint against society if every one who was willing to undergo a fair share of this labor and abstinence could attain a fair share of the fruits. But is this the fact? Is it not the reverse of the fact? The reward, instead of being proportioned to the labor and abstinence of the individual, is almost in an inverse ratio to it; those who receive the least, labor and abstain the most (John Stuart Mill, Fortnightly Review, 1879, p. 226, written in 1869). We have seen what the "two nations" each receive it remains to estimate their respective numbers, and the following facts supply materials for this computation :

(a) The Comparatively Rich. It has been shown that the adult males without professed occupation numbered 407,169 in 1881. This represents a population of about 1,630,000, all of whom were living on incomes not derived from any specified occupation.

The landlords (of more than a field or a cottage each) number only 180,524, owning ten-elevenths of the total area (Mulhall, "Dictionary of Statistics," p. 266).

The mortgage upon the industry of the community known as the National Debt was owned, in 1880, by only 236,514 persons,* 103,122 of whom shared in it only to the extent of less than £15 per annum each (Mulhall, "Dictionary of Statistics," p. 109).

(b) The Comparatively Poor.

The manual-labor class number about 5,000,000 families. Mr. Mulhall, "Dict.

of Statistics," p. 246; families...... 4,629,000 Prof. Leone Levi, Times, 13th Jan.,

1885; families ... 5,600,000 Mr. Giffen, "Essays in Finance," Vol.

II., p. 461; sepa

rate incomes...... 13,200,000 Five and a-half million families live in separate houses under £20, and of these four and a-half million in houses under 10 rental, notwithstanding that the poor in the great towns live in large tenement housest (Giffen, "Essays in Finance," Vol. II., p. 348).

* These include many banks, insurance companies, foreign potentates, and others not to be included in the present computation.

†This includes, of course, the rural districts, where a comfortable house may generally be obtained below £20 annual rental, but more than a third of the population now live in towns, where the poor are often herded together in slums, yielding more than that rental per house.

(a) The Comparatively Rich.

Only thirty-nine out of every 1,000 persons dying, leave behind them 300 worth of property (including furniture, etc.), and only sixty-one per 1,000 leave any property worth mentioning at all.

"It appears . . . that one-half of the wealth of the United Kingdom is held by persons who leave at least £20,000 (personalty) at death" Mulhall, "Dictionary of Statistics," pp. 278, 279, from Probate and Legacy Duty Returns).

The number of these is given by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, as 1,129 in 1877: as property is ascertained to pass by death about every twenty years, this gives a class of about 25,000

persons.

The incomes of £150 per annum and upwards are only 1 millions in number out of 16 millions

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of separate incomes (Giffen, Essays in Finance," Vol. II., P. 467).

Mulhall estimates that there were, in 1881, 222,000 families of the very rich, 604,000 families of the rich, 1,220,000 families of the middle and trading class: in all only about two million families above the manual-labor class of nearly five million families ("Dictionary of Statistics," p. 246).

It may, therefore, safely be concluded that the whole of the £850,000,000 annually is now received by about 11,000,000 of the population, giving an average income of £305 per adult man: about two-fifths (330,000,000; Mulhall, "Dictionary of Statistics," p. 246) is enjoyed by a small class of less than 1,000,000 persons who have on an average £1,189 per adult man whether they contribute anything to the product or not.

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(b) The Comparatively Poor.

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Nine hundred and thirty-nine out of every 1,000 persons (about half of whom are adults) die without property worth speaking of, and 961 out of every 1,000 without furniture, investments, or effects worth £300 (Mulhall, Dictionary of Statistics," from Probate Duty Returns-p. 279). The number of persons ployed" at wages in the industries of the Kingdom is placed at thirteen to fourteen millions, and this includes over four million women. Mr. J. S. Jeans, Statistical Society's Journal, Vol. XLVII., p. 631, places the num

ber at about...... 14,000,000 Mr. Giffen, "Essays in Finance," Vol. II,p.461 (separate incomes of man

ual labor class)... 13,200,000 Mr. Mulhall," Dictionary of Statistics," p. 246 (separate families of manual-labor class)... Prof. Leone Levi, Times, 13th Jan., 1885, (number of workers in manual

4,629,000

labor class in 1881) 12,200,000 Out of 10,464,255 males with any occupation at all (see p. 4) 8,180,000 were in receipt of wages, and belonged to the manual-labor class (Prof. Leone Levi, Times, 13th January, 1885).

We may, therefore, certainly conclude that the £500,000,000 allotted to the manual-labor class is shared among 26,000,000 persons and is about 38 per adult (or £77 per adult male) annually.

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