42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of people receiving good incomes from trades and professions out of 

 all proportion to the increase of population. We can not but infer 

 from this that the number of the moderately rich is increasing, and 

 that there is little foundation for the assertion that the rich are be- 

 coming richer. All the facts agree. The working-classes have had 

 large additions to their means ; capital has increased in about equal 

 ratio ; but the increase of capital per head of the capitalist classes is 

 by no means so great as the increase of working-class incomes. 



I should wish further to point out, however, that it is a mistake to 

 speak of the income in the various schedules to the income-tax as the 

 income of a few, or exclusively of classes which can be called capital- 

 ist, or rich. A suspicion of this has already been raised by the facts 

 as to trades and professions. Let me just mention this one little fact 

 in addition. Out of £190,000,000 assessed under Schedule A in 1881- 

 '82, the Slim of £11,359,000 was exempted from duty as being the in- 

 come of people whose whole income from all sources was under £150 

 a year. If we could get at the facts as to how the shares of public 

 companies are held, and as to the immense variety of interests in lands 

 and houses, we should have ample confirmation of what has already 

 appeared from the probate-duty figures, that there is a huge minority 

 interested in property in the United Kingdom, great numbers of whom 

 would not be spoken of as the capitalist classes. 



To test the question as to whether there has been any dispropor- 

 tionate increase of capital, and of the income from it, in yet another 

 way, I have endeavored to make an analysis of the income-tax returns 

 themselves, distinguishing in them what appears to be the income of 

 idle capital from income which is derived not so much from the capi- 

 tal itself as from the labor bestowed in using the capital. Only the 

 roughest estimate can be made, and the data, when we go back to 

 1843, are even more incomplete than they are now ; but I have en- 

 deavored as far as possible to give everything to capital that ought 

 to be given, and not to err on the side of assigning it too small a share. 

 The whole of Schedule A is thus assigned to capital, although it is 

 well known that not even in Schedule A is the income obtained with- 

 out exertion and care and some risk of loss, which are entitled to re- 

 muneration. In Schedule D also I have allowed that all the income 

 from public companies and foreign investments is from idle capital, 

 although here the vigilance necessary and the risks attendant on the 

 business are really most serious, and part of the so-called profit is not 

 really interest on idle capital at all, but strictly the remuneration of 

 labor. I have also rather exaggerated than depreciated the estimate 

 for capital employed in trades and professions, my estimate being 

 rather more than that of Mr. Dudley Baxter in his famous paper on 

 the "National Income." With these explanations I submit the follow- 

 ing estimate of the share of capital in the income-tax income at differ- 

 ent dates : 



