LASSES

"The total drawn by the legal disposers of what are sometimes called
the 'three rents' of land, capital, and ability amounts at present to
about _1,110,000,000l._ yearly, or just under two-thirds of the total
produce.

"AND THE MASSES

"Allowing for the increase since these estimates were made, we may
safely say that the manual labour class receives for all its millions
of workers only some _690,000,000l._"[138]

In a short table the distribution of the national income is then given
as follows:

Rent L290,000,000
Interest 360,000,000
Profits and Salaries 460,000,000
-------------

Total (that is, the income of the
legal proprietors of the three
natural monopolies of land, capital,
and ability) 1,110,000,000
Income of manual labour class 690,000,000
-------------
Total produce L1,800,000,000[139]

At first sight it seems outrageous that "the income of the legal
proprietors of the three natural monopolies of land, capital, and
ability" should come to _1,110,000,000l._ per annum, and the income of
the manual labour class only to _690,000,000l._ per annum, about
one-third of the whole, especially as we learn on page 4 of the
pamphlet that the "idle rich" are only a small fraction of the
community. This statement would prove the assertion that the idle rich
are causing the poverty of the poor to be correct if it were honest
and fair, but it is neither the one nor the other.

In the first place the foregoing statement divides the nation into two
classes "the masses" and "the classes": manual labourers and "the
legal proprietors of the three natural monopolies." As the pamphlet is
addressed to the uncritical body of general readers, and especially to
working men, these will naturally divide, owing to the artful wording
of the phrase, the national income between manual labourers and
capitalist monopolists. According to this pamphlet everyone who is not
a labourer is a capitalist monopolist. Therefore the capitalist
monopolist class includes all lawyers and doctors, all parsons and
clerks, all officers and salaried officials. Every business man, every
farmer, every fisherman, every greengrocer, every baker, every
butcher, every sailo