ncome Statistics for
1916."

Among those of small incomes--$5,000 to $10,000--nearly half of the
income was derived from personal services. The proportion of the income
resulting from personal service diminished steadily as the incomes rose
until, in the highest income group--those receiving $2,000,000 or more
per year, less than one-half of one per cent. was the result of personal
service while more than 99 per cent. of the incomes came from property
ownership.

A small portion of the American people are in receipt of incomes that
necessitate a report to the revenue officers. Among those persons, a
small number are in receipt of incomes that might be termed
large--incomes of $10,000 or over, for example. Among these persons with
large incomes the majority of the income is secured in the form of rent,
interest, dividends and profits. The higher the income group, the larger
is the percentage of the income that comes from property holdings.

The economic system that exists at the present time in the United States
places a premium on property ownership. The recipients of the large
incomes are the holders of the large amounts of property.

Large incomes are property incomes. The rich are rich because they are
property owners. Furthermore, the organization of present-day business
makes the owner of property more secure--far more secure in his income,
than is the worker who produces the wealth out of which the property
income is paid.

5. _Plutocracy_

The owning class in the United States is established on an economic
basis,--the private ownership of the earth. No more solid foundation for
class integrity and class power has ever been discovered.

The owners of the United States are powerfully entrenched. Operating
through the corporation, its members have secured possession of the bulk
of the more useful resources, the important franchises and the
productive capital. Where they do not own outright, they control. The
earth, in America, is the landlords and the fullness thereof. They own
the productive machinery, and because they own they are able to secure a
vast annual income in return for their bare ownership.

Families which enjoy property income have one great common
interest--that of perpetuating and continuing the property income; hence
the "cohesion of wealth." "The cohesion of wealth" is a force that welds
individuals and families who receive property income into a unified
group or class.

The cohesion