574 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXV. No. 641 



States; and their combined fortunes— in- 

 cluding the half -millionaires as well— did 

 not exceed a probable $100,000,000, or one 

 per cent, of the then aggregate wealth of 

 the nation. Sixteen years ago the com- 

 bined fortunes of this class were estimated 

 at $36,500,000,000, or fifty-six per cent, of 

 our national wealth. To-day a bare one 

 per cent, of our population owns practi- 

 cally ninety per cent, of the entire wealth 

 of the nation. 



As a result of this wealth concentration, 

 industrial society is practically divided 

 into the two classes, of the enormously rich, 

 and the miserably poor; our 18,000,000 

 wage earners receive an average of but 

 $400 per year; nine tenths of our business 

 men are, notoriously, failures; our clergy 

 receive an average annual salary of about 

 $500 ; the average for the educators of the 

 land is even lower ; and the income of other 

 professional men in proportion; while of 

 our 6,000,000 farmers, one third are ten- 

 ants, and the homes of one third of the 

 remaining two thirds are mortgaged, and 

 a debt burden is almost universal. 



These conditions are not normal nor the 

 result of national law or causation, but are 

 instead the result of a monopoly of land 

 and mineral resources, of money, of trans- 

 portation, and other public utilities, as also 

 of industry. This monopoly has, more- 

 over, been brought about by means of the 

 corporation, industrial, financial and pub- 

 lic service. It is thus the work of human 

 law alone; the product of vicious institu- 

 tions. The corporation, as constituted, is 

 in fact a monstrosity in our industrial 

 system. 



But if the conditions outlined are the 

 result alone of unjust and vicious institu- 

 tions, then to law must we look for their 

 correction. The corporation should yet be 

 made cooperative, social, instead of as now 

 the instrument of private greed. 



Methods of ascertaining the Cost of Trans- 

 portation: John B. Daish, Washington, 

 D. C. 



From the adjudicated court cases it 

 seems reasonably certain that the method 

 used by the Supreme Court in Smyth v. 

 Ames is inaccurate, for the relation which 

 operating expenses bear to gross receipts 

 does not and can never show the cost of 

 transporting the commodities. The method 

 used by the Circuit Court of the United 

 States for the District of South Dakota 

 could not stand the tests applied by the 

 Supreme Court of the United States, which 

 tests, it will be recalled, were different 

 from the method formerly used by that 

 tribunal. The method used by the Ken- 

 tucky Railroad Commission is clearly more 

 elaborate if not more correct, than the 

 Supreme Court cases. 



To determine with mathematical ac- 

 curacy the cost of traffic, a definite method 

 has not as yet been devised. The difficulty 

 is twofold. First, on the one line of road, 

 with a single equipment, two kinds of 

 traffic are carried. How is the capital to 

 be- separated for the purpose of producing 

 revenue upon these two kinds of traffic? 

 Again, the method used by the Kentucky 

 Commission considers the whole schedule 

 of rates, rates in gross, and secures its 

 lesults in figures per ton per mile. In 

 short, in the same focus it takes a broad 

 survey of all kinds of commodities in the 

 two kinds of traffic and microscopically 

 looks at the smallest possible unit of meas- 

 urement. The shipment of a box of books 

 is augmented to per ton per mile, a ship- 

 ment of a car-load or train-load of vege- 

 tables is reduced to the same unit. While 

 this unit may be used in mathematics, it 

 can be confidently asserted that it rarely, 

 if ever, enters the head of a traffic manager 

 making rates; ordinarily he does not con- 

 sider the cost of traffic, for he does not 

 know it. 



