400 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL ohap. 



more utilized. The result of these two great factors has 

 been the corresponding increase of agriculture, mining, 

 manufactures, and commerce, by means of which the 

 increased wealth has been directly produced. If, then, 

 fifty years ago there was practically no want in the United 

 States, and there is now, say, ten times the wealth, with 

 about four times the population, not only ought there to 

 be no want of any kind, but all those who had mere 

 necessaries before should be able to have comforts and 

 even luxuries now ; hours of labour should be shorter, and 

 the struggle for existence less severe. But the facts are 

 the very opposite of these ; and there has evidently been 

 an increasing inequality in the distribution of the wealth 

 produced. The result of this inequality is seen, broadly, 

 in the increase of wealth and luxury on the one hand, and 

 of the most grinding poverty on the other; and more 

 particularly in the growth and increase of millionaires. 

 Fifty years ago a millionaire was a rarity in England ; now 

 they are so common as to excite no special attention. In 

 America in 1840, there was probably no one worth one 

 million pounds (five million dollars). Now there are 

 certainly hundreds, perhaps over a thousand, who own as 

 much ; and it has been estimated that two hundred and 

 fifty thousand persons own three fourths of the whole 

 wealth of the country. 



The paradox of increasing want with increasing wealth 

 is thus clearly explained. If we take the two hundred 

 and fifty thousand persons above referred to to be heads 

 of families, four to a family, we have a million persons 

 absorbing three fourths of the wealth created by the whole 

 community, the remaining fifty-nine millions having the 

 remaining one fourth amongst them ; and as probably 

 half of these are comfortably off, the other half have to 

 exist in various grades of destitution from genteel poverty 

 down to absolute starvation. 



The ProUem to he Solved. 



The problem we have now to solve is, to discover what 

 are the special legal and social conditions that have 



