| Size of Estates | Ground Rents and similar Burdens. | Other Property. | Total Gross Capital Values. |
| £ | £ | £ | |
| Not exceeding £300 gross | 1,505 | 388,068 | 3,773,049 |
| Between £300 and £500 gross | 5,811 | 397,431 | 3,870,096 |
| £100 to £500 | 13,008 | 517,903 | 5,863,568 |
| £500 to £1000 | 43,922 | 1,226,606 | 12,073,152 |
| £1000 to £10,000 | 571,404 | 7,811,769 | 74,876,160 |
| £10,000 to £25,000 | 790,506 | 4,802,567 | 44,202,042 |
| £25,000 to £50,000 | 724,520 | 4,199,814 | 37,359,491 |
| £50,000 to £75,000 | 371,867 | 2,061,497 | 20,792,733 |
| £75,000 to £100,000 | 271,003 | 1,225,183 | 15,258,871 |
| £100,000 to £150,000 | 354,061 | 1,485,937 | 18,595,273 |
| £150,000 to £250,000 | 561,046 | 2,479,257 | 18,590,492 |
| £250,000 to £500,000 | 411,398 | 2,257,972 | 21,363,311 |
| £500,000 to £1,000,000 | 105,066 | 992,010 | 8,365,169 |
| Over £1,000,000 | 188,350 | 6,571,469 | 16,905,728 |
| Total | 4,413,467 | 36,471,483 | 301,889,135 |
The table is full of striking contrasts. I have divided it into two parts, the lower of which consists almost entirely of the income tax paying classes. We should expect those with incomes exceeding £3 per week for the most part to be the property owners of the nation. It will be seen that the number of persons with £500 of property and upwards indicated by this table is 939,000. This number may be compared with our estimate of income tax payers, which was 1,100,000.
Of the 939,030 persons with £8,049,000,000, as many as 312,120 own between them but about £258,000,000, leaving 626,910 persons with £7,791,000,000.
Of the 626,910 persons with £7,791,000,000, as many as 507,300 have between them £1,863,000,000, leaving 119,610 persons with £5,928,000,000.
And it is amongst the big estates that we must assuredly look for the bulk of the avoidance of Death Duties, which is clearly indicated by the table on pp. 76-77. Thus the closer we get to the facts the more amazing the monopoly of capital appears. It is literally true to say that a mere handful of people owns the nation. It is probably true that a group of about 120,000 people who with their families form about one-seventieth part of the population, owns about two-thirds of the entire accumulated wealth of the United Kingdom.
It is an inevitable consequence of the monopoly of capital by a few people that the distribution of the national income is as pictured in the frontispiece of this volume. If we were quite unable to investigate incomes, we should know without investigation that the facts as to capital must have as a corollary a grossly uneven distribution of income. If, again, we had merely the known facts as to incomes before us, and death duty statistics were not available, we should be able to deduce from them just such a monopoly of wealth as is examined in this chapter.
As to the insignificant fraction of the national wealth owned by the working and lower middle classes, it is mockery to term it the "capital of the working classes," as is done not infrequently. It corresponds, for the most part, to the squirrel's store of nuts. It stands chiefly for sick pay, unemployment benefits, funeral moneys, bits of jerry-built houses, and so forth. It is rarely industrial capital used for the benefit of the savers.
Those who have so little property cannot bargain fairly for the sale of their services with those who own the national undertaking. A small group of private owners exercises the effective government of the nation through the possession of the means of production, which are the means of life. As for the Government at Westminster, it is impotent because, like the mass of the people, it owns little or no property. It cannot even control the chief source of the national wealth—coal, or the prime factor in trade—railways. The investments of the State, like the investments of the masses, are a negligible quantity. And those rule who own.