TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 829 



tition carries to the capitalist a constantly diminishing ratio of profit from each 

 year's product, and to the labourer a constantly increasing share. This rule was 

 formulated by Bastiat many years ago in the following terms : ' In proportion 

 to the increase of capital, the absolute share of product falling to capital may be 

 augmented, but the relative share is diminished, wlrile, on the other hand, the share 

 of the labourer is increased both absolutely and relatively.' All the facts which I 

 have been able to consider sustain the rule. The recent investigation made in 

 England by Robert Giffen, of which I was informed about a year ago on my visit 

 to that country, disclose the same sequences of diminishing rates of profit and 

 increasing rates of wages, accompanied by increased purchasing power for every 

 unit of wages, for the last fifty years of English history. 



If, then, our national wealth has increased #1,500,000,000 a year for twenty 

 years, including the rise in the value of land, what does it come to by the unit of the 

 individual? One-half at least is the increased value of land, the other half 

 consists in added wealth, or #750,000,000 a year ; but this great sum if equally 

 distributed would give less than #20 a year to each person. What proportion of 

 the people of this country have saved #20 each year, or #60 a year to each work- 

 man for twenty years ? The average tax upon each person — combining national, 

 state, and municipal taxation — has been very nearly, if" not quite, #20 per head. 



What proportion of this tax does each man, woman, and child contribute ? 

 Have these taxes been paid by the same persons who have received the wealth ? 

 These are grave questions which working men and women may fairly ask. The 

 question which each man who earns his daily bread by means of his daily work 

 needs to have answered more than any other is this — f How soon and in what 

 way am I to be relieved of the heavy, and in a large measure useless, burthen of 

 taxation which finds me poor, keeps me poor, and leaves me poor ; which takes 

 from me aE hope of saving, and deprives me of a part of the comforts and even of 

 the necessaries of life ? ' 



There is no mercy in these statistics. By so much as some working men and 

 women earn more than #400 a year must some other working men and women 

 earn less, if that is the measure of all there is ; and on what each #400 will buy 

 three persons must be sustained (to be exact, 29-1 Oths). Shelter, subsistence, and 

 clothing for each person must be provided out of what £146 a year, or forty cents 

 per day, will pay for. It is appalling, but it is true. In order to increase this 

 rate but 5 cents a day at the present time, one thousand million dollars' worth 

 of increased product must be made, and a market must be found for the increase. 



Such a sum is twice the value of our wheat crop, ten times the value of our 

 production of pig iron or of our wool clip, three times the value of our cotton crop, 

 nearly twice the value of all our textile fabrics. To put it another way : in order 

 that each wage-earner may get 15 cents a day higher wages, and that each person 

 may have for consumption what 5 cents a day more will buy, more than he has 

 now — we must add to our present product the equivalent of our present wheat 

 crop, of our production of pig iron, and the value of all our textiles — a sum-total 

 of #1,050,000,000. Ten hundred and fifty million dollars a year will give 5 cents 

 a day to 58,000,000 persons, and no more. 



Yet at this rate of 40 cents a day on the average, the people of the United 

 States are the most prosperous in the world, because 40 cents a day will buy more 

 than it will in any other country. 



It is inequality in the wages of those who do the work of the world which calls 

 for the attention both of the student and of the statesman, and inequality in what 

 the wages will buy. Wholesale work, as it may be called, both in production and 

 distribution, is done at the smallest fraction of charge— at low-labour cost, but at 

 high rates of wages to skilled workmen. It is the common labourer who suffers 

 most, and it is retail distribution on which the highest charge is suffered. 



(Sea Tables on following pages.) 



