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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 ?- to 7?-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, "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 "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. "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. "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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, "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 "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? "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 "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 "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 "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, "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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 "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, "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.