380 TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 



Who invented that theory? It wasn't the farmers at all, it was labor 

 that started that theory. They invented it. Twenty-eight poor flannel 

 weavers of Rochdale in 1843 began saving their pennies and in a year 

 they had saved a pound apiece, and then they started a consumers' co- 

 operative store. That store started so modestly has grown until today 

 it has a membership of 4,000,000 families. It has 1,500 of these societies 

 in Great Britain. It has the greatest wholesale establishment in the 

 world and it has the greatest wholesale store in the world in Scotland. 



They carried the idea to Denmark. What happened over there? The 

 farmers, after organizing their co-operative societies, decided they would 

 organize the government, too, and they elected a majority of that 

 parliament in both houses. They established the best government-con- 

 trolled land credit system in the world. When those chaps began about 

 eighty-five families owned 95 per cent of the land, and today 89.9 per 

 cent of the farmers own and operate their farms, because they established 

 a credit system which furnished them money to buy those farms. 



Somebody or Something Should Be Amended 

 I have been sizing up those chaps who want to keep producing labor 

 of one kind fighting producing labor of another kind. As I have got 

 it figured out about 40 per cent of our people — maybe a little more than 

 that — may be rated as farmers; about 35 per cent rated as hand-workers, 

 and about 15 per cent as brain-workers who earn their living by brain 

 work just as honestly as any hand-worker, and then there is about 10 

 per cent of middlemen and capitalists and profiteers. 



According to estimates the farmers of the country have an investment 

 of about eighty billion dollars, but it has shrunk down a good deal since 

 the Federal Reserve turned us over; but even at that it is less than 

 a per capita proportion of the wealth of the country. These 35 per cent 

 of laborers have still less proportion of the capital, or the 50 per cent 

 including the brain-workers with them. We do find, however, that the 

 10 per cent has more than half of the national wealth, and considerably 

 more than half of the national net income. 



Now it occurs to me that while we have got things arranged on that 

 basis these chaps with such large net incomes should pay some of the 

 taxes. We passed an amendment to the constitution of the United 

 States providing for the taxing of incomes. Then they passed an 

 opinion of the supreme court that you couldn't tax a stock dividend. I 

 guess we will have to amend the constitution of the United States again 

 or else amend the supreme court, I don't know which. I tried to amend 

 the court a little the other day, but got licked on it. 



Swatting the Standard Oil Company 

 Now I am going to call your attention to some of the things that have 

 happened along this line in the United States recently. I sent over to 

 the Federal Trade Commission for an official statement on this question, 

 and I am in receipt of the tabulated list of stock dividends declared in 

 the year 1922 by 328 companies, and they amount to $2,149,151,425. If 

 you go down through the whole list of 328 companies you can put the 

 manager of any one of these outfits on the witness stand and prove be- 



