People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1893 — WHY PEOPLE ARE POOR. [ARTICLE]

WHY PEOPLE ARE POOR.

The Enormous Tribute Paid By Labor in the Past Twenty Years. It seems curiously paradoxical to say that the people of the richest country on the earth are poverty stricken, and yet it is true. The “nine million mortgaged homes,” disclosed to view by the eleventh census of the United States, is proof enough of that fact, without citing more. Yet any one who will take the trouble to study the conditions which have prevailed during the past twenty years will not be surprised, after investigation, that it is so. During that period the productive forces of this country have been called upon to pay tribute to foreign speculators, to the amount of almost $2,000,000,000, of which we have positive knowledge, and perhaps twice as much more, concerning which, having been reinvested here, we are unable to get complete information. They have paid over $1,500,000,000 on the principal of a war debt, and about $1,600,000,000 of interest on the same. There has been consumed by fires $1,500,000,000, according to the best estimates obtainable. Not including the payments on either the principal or interest of the debt, it has cost $4,000,000,000 to run the national government for that period, or including the post offices, $5,000,000,000, and fully as much more to run the several state, county and municipal governments, and the judiciary probably considerable more, but say $4,000,000,000 for those purposes. The interests and dividends on railroad bonds and stocks, including that on “water,” has been about $4,000,000,000 more. The interest on the $9,000,000,000 of real estate mortgages which Mr. Porter's census agents reported at 8 per cent, would amount in that time to $14,400,000,000 and the interest on other individual debts, including the real estate mortgages not reported by the census, would be fully as much more. Then the direct “aids,” “bonuses,” “grants” and other concessions to great corporations have been considerably above a billion dollars in value, say $1,200,000,000. Omitting from the calculation all reference to the excessively expensive business methods now in use for handling supplies of all kinds, and which has been variously estimated to cost from half a billion to a billion dollars annually in excess of what the same business could be easily done for, and the following table shows the enormous expense which has been saddled upon the people during the period named, and the annual average: Tribute to foreign speculators ....$ 1,900,000,600 Principal national debt paid... 1,500,000,000 Interest national debt paid.... 1,600,000,000 Loss by fires.... 1,500,000,000 Expense national government.... 5,000,000,000 Expense states, etc... 4,000,000,000 Interest and dividends to railroads... 4,000,000,000 Interest on private debts (real estate mortgages)....... 14,400,000,000 Interest on private and other debts 14,400,000,000 Direct grants to corporations......1,200,000,000 Total, 20 years........$49,000,000,000 Annual average........$ 2,475,000,000 Not much wonder that this country is now afflicted with 9,000,000 mortgaged homes, 10,000 millionaires and 3,000,000 tramps, when the productive forces of the nation have been loaded with an annual burden of over two and one-half billion dollars, nearly all of which went directly into the coffers of a few powerful corporations. Now, how much of this incomprehensibly vast sum might have been saved to the people, and how much can the burden be now reduced? Is there any way in which the necessary reduction can be made except by undoing the vicious legislation which has been at the bottom of most of it and enacting just and equitable laws in its stead? —Iowa Farmer’s Tribune. —Our movement is fettered with an army of place-hunters and pap-suckers, but in spite of them the cause is marching on.