Riches and Poverty (1910)

THE present edition of "Riches and Poverty" revises my estimates of the distribution of the wealth of the United Kingdom down to the year 1908. The effect of the revision is to show that in the five years that have elapsed since this work was first published, the distribution of wealth has grown even more unequal. The comparative stationariness of money wages of late years is a fact upon which the labourers themselves, and not less the nation of which they form by far the greater part, are to be commiserated. I write at a time when a great deal of discontent is becoming evident amongst large masses of the population; it may be well for those, and they are many, who have written in condemnation of that discontent, to ponder the following pages, and in particular to compare the profits recorded by the Inland Revenue Commissioners with the evidence as to wages collected by the Labour Department of the Board of Trade.

My own view of the subject is, that the massing of capital in large units has so considerably strengthened the hand of capital in its dealings with labour that in recent years Trade Unions have comparatively lost much ground. To-day the masters in many of our industries can exercise collective powers much more effectively than Trade Unions. Combination amongst employers in some trades has reached a point at which it has become possible to rule alike the price of products and the price of labour.

While since 1900 nominal or money wages have been at a standstill, the cost of living has continued to rise. The retail cost of food in London rose 9 per cent. in 1900-1908. Therefore British real or commodity wages have fallen heavily since 1900. A London platelayer, when he has the privilege of working seven days a week, can earn 21s. a week in 1910 as in 1900, but the real value of the 21s. has fallen by about 9 per cent.; in effect, that is, he earns 1s. 10d. a week less than in 1900. Now 19s. 2d. is not a just wage for a London platelayer.

The statements which were made in the 1905 edition of "Riches and Poverty" proved to be uncomfortable reading for many, and I have now a great many books on my shelves in which they have been discussed. The attempts to refute them have entirely failed. It is now generally accepted that the number of Income Tax payers is approximately what I stated it to be, and the increase of Income Tax assessments indicates that my estimates of the income of the rich did not err on the side of liberality.

Work such as is attempted in these pages ought, of course, to be entrusted to the hands of a permanent Census Department, empowered to collect information, and instructed to analyse and diffuse it. In the absence of such a Department, and in the lamentable condition of our national statistical records, the conclusions of a private investigator are only too likely to be called in question by those who do not stomach what he has to say. It may be said that the disagreeable estimates I have presented in the frontispiece of this volume rest upon private authority, and that they cannot be accepted without great reservation. I should like to direct attention, therefore, to a series of facts which are official, which cannot be denied, and which rest upon the basis that they represent masses of property actually taxed.

I refer to the estates which pass at death in the United Kingdom year by year, and which are valued for the purposes of the death duties. The following facts, to which I called attention for the first time in "Riches and Poverty," can be easily memorized, and every one ought to know them.

Year by year, as regularly as the seasons, properties pass at death in the United Kingdom, free of all debts, absolutely net, to the value of, in round figures, £300,000,000. Of this £300,000,000, the aggregate of approximately 80,000 separate estates, as much as £200,000,000, or thereabouts, is left by about FOUR THOUSAND (4000) PERSONS.

I repeat that these figures are not my estimates, but the official figures ascertained and published by the Inland Revenue Commissioners. They can be verified by any reader of this book by reference to the latest Official Report of the Commissioners of His Majesty's Inland Revenue (Cd. 4868. Price 1s. 7d.).

Those who are acquainted with the facts know, as Mr Balfour recognized in reply to me in a debate in the House of Commons on September 13th, 1909, that the official figures I have quoted would be larger but for the passing of property inter vivos in avoidance of the death duties. But, to take the figures as they are, an under statement of the wealth of the rich, I put this question to those who come to consider the estimates I have made:

If, in the United Kingdom, out of £300,000,000 a year passing at death, as much as £200,000,000, or two-thirds of the whole, is left by only 4000 persons, does it not follow, as the night the day, that the distribution of the national income must necessarily proceed on some such lines as those estimated in the frontispiece to this volume?

And with that question I once more issue these pages to the public.

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