mit that there would be no sense and no justice
in such a plan of division, and you doubt if intelligent human beings
would submit to it. But, my friend, that is not quite so bad as the
distribution of wealth in America to-day is. Suppose that instead of
all the members of the little island community being workers, all
working equally hard, fairly sharing the work of the community, one
man absolutely refused to do anything at all, saying, "I was the first
one to get ashore. The land really belongs to me. I am the landlord. I
won't work, but you must work for me." And suppose that eleven other
men said in like manner. "We won't work. We found the tools, we
brought the seeds and the food out of the boats when we came. We are
the capitalists and you must do the work in the fields. We will
superintend you, give you orders where to dig, and when, and where to
stop. You eighty-eight common fellows are the laborers who must do the
hard work while we use our brains." And suppose that they actually
carried out that plan and _then_ divided the wealth in the way I have
described, that would be a pretty good illustration of how the wealth
produced in America under our existing social system is divided.

_And I ask you what you think of that, Jonathan Edwards. How do you
like it?_

These are not my figures. They are not the figures of any rabid
Socialist making frenzied guesses. They are taken from a book called
_The Present Distribution of Wealth in the United States_, by the late
Dr. Charles B. Spahr, a book that is used in most of our colleges and
universities. No serious criticism of the figures has ever been
attempted and most economists, even the conservative ones, base their
own estimates upon Spahr's work. It would be worth your while to get
the book from the library, Jonathan, and to read it carefully.

In the meantime, look over the following table which sets forth the
results of Dr. Spahr's investigation, Jonathan, and remember that the
condition of things has not improved since 1895, when the book was
written, but that they have, on the contrary, very much worsened.

SPAHR'S TABLE OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES

==========+============+=======+==========+=================+=======
| No. of | Per | Average | Aggregate | Per
Class | Families | Cent | Wealth | Wealth | Cent
----------+------------+-------+----------+-----------------+-------
Rich |