the families in the United States
were property-less; but that, nevertheless, seven eighths of the
families owned only one eighth of the national wealth, while one per
cent of the families owned more than the remaining ninety-nine per cent.

Mr. Lucien Sanial, in a most careful analysis of the census for 1900,
shows that, classified according to occupations, 250,251 persons
possessed $67,000,000,000, out of a total of $95,000,000,000 given as
the national wealth; that is to say, 0.9 per cent of the total number in
all occupations owned 70.5 per cent of the total national wealth. The
middle class, consisting of 8,429,845 persons, being 29.0 per cent of
the total number in all occupations, owned $24,000,000,000, or 25.3 per
cent of the total national wealth. The lowest class, the proletariat,
consisting of 20,393,137 persons, being 70.1 per cent of the total
number in all occupations, owned but $4,000,000,000, or 4.2 per cent of
the total wealth. To recapitulate: Of the 29,073,233 persons ten years
old and over engaged in occupations,

0.9 per cent own 70.5 per cent of total wealth.
29.0 per cent own 25.3 per cent of total wealth.
70.1 per cent own 4.2 per cent of total wealth.

Startling as these figures are, it will be evident upon reflection that
they do not adequately represent the amount of wealth concentration. The
occupational basis is not quite satisfactory as applied to the richest
class. It serves for the proletarian class, of course, and for a very
large part of the middle class. In these classes, as a rule, the
_occupied_ persons represent wealth ownership. But this is by no means
true of the richest class. In this class we have a very considerable
proportion of the wealth owned by _unoccupied_ persons, such as the
wives rich in their own right, children and other unoccupied members of
families rich by inheritance. Mr. Henry Laurens Call, in a paper read
before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at
Columbia University, at the end of 1906, made these figures the basis of
the startling estimate that one per cent of our population own not less
than ninety per cent of our total wealth.

There is a peculiarity of modern capitalism which enables the great
capitalists to control vastly more wealth than they own. Take any group
of large capitalists, and it will be found that they _control_ a much
greater volume of capital than they _own_. The invested capital of a