1909 Congressional Record ~ Remarks of Senator Owen
61st Congress ~ Senate (reprint)
SENATE ~ JUNE 29, 1909 ~ WITH THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE PRESIDING
Mr. OWEN. :
Mr. President, the Finance Committee has struck out the inheritance-tax provision of the House of Representatives. It should have been heavily increased and made progressive on the swollen fortunes of the country. The -most important need of the people of the United States of this generation requires the abatement of the gigantic fortunes being piled up by successful monopoly, by successful stock jobbing, by skillful appropriation under the protection of the law of all the opportunities of life, and which have brought about a grossly inequitable distribution of the proceeds of human labor and of the values created by the activities of men.
I have framed this provision for the express purpose of proposing a readjustment in the distribution of wealth in this country in a manner which will restore to tlie people who have created these values the gigantic sums appropriated either by fraud or by the permission and the assistance of the law itself.
DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH.
Mr. President, I have heretofore shown to the Senate in a manner most conclusive that the very great part of all of the wealth of this country has already passed into the hands of less than 10 per cent, and over half of the national wealth into the hands of less than 1 per cent of the people. (P. 32S2, Congressional Record, June 15.)
Spahrs’s table for the distribution of wealth in the United States, taken from his work, “The Present Distribution of Wealth in the United States,” when our national wealth was $60,000,000,000, is as follows:
| Class | Families | Percent | Average wealth | Aggregate wealth | Percent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rich | 125,000 | 1.0 | $263,040 | $32,880,000,000 | 54.8 |
| Middle | 1,362,500 | 10.9 | $14,180 | $19,320,000,000 | 32.2 |
| Poor | 4,762,500 | 38.1 | $1,639 | $7,800,000,000 | 13.3 |
| Very Poor | 6,250,000 | 50 | -- | -- | -- |
| ----------- | ----------- | ----------- | ----------- | ----------- | ----------- |
| Total | 13,500,000 | 100.0 | $4,800 | $60,000,000,000 | 100.0 |
The inequalities have been steadily growing worse, and when a single person’s fortune is estimated at a thousand millions and is gathering in $50,000,000 per annum of the net proceeds of the products of the labor of this country, while millions of human beings can not lay aside $50 apiece per annum, what must be the inevitable result? It is this condition, half understood, that is developing rapidly a sentiment of radical socialism, discontent, and social unrest.
...
What part of this wealth created by labor is theirs?
They have no real estate, no live stock, form machinery, manufacturing machinery, railroads, or under any visible classification. The only thing that they can have under this tabulation is clothing and a little personal property.
And yet the products of the labor in our specified manufacturing industries of 1005 reached a total of $14, S02, 147,087, for 5,470,321 wage-earners, whose product was therefore worth $2, 70S per capita.
These people received $2,611 ,54 0,532 in wages (Stat. Abst. U. S.; 1907, p. 144), or $479 per capita.
This $479 each must feed and shelter and clothe and educate and provide leisure and the joyous participation in the common providences of God for an average of three people, or about $160 each per annum, or about an average of $18.33 per month.
There can hardly be much margin of saving under the circumstances for sickness, ill health, accident, or loss of employment.
In New York City, with over four millions of people, less than 1 in 40 has any real estate.
ENORMOUS WEALTH INHERITED BY A MAN’S CHILDREN IS WORTHLESS IN THE HIGHEST AND BEST SENSE.
Mr. President, it takes a human being of the first magnitude to administer an estate of $10,000,000 with wisdom and efficiency. No human being can properly consume the income -of such an estate, which, at 5 per cent, will make an income of $500,000 per annum, $1,366 per diem — about a hundred dollars an hour for every waking hour.
Since such vast sums of money can not he properly used by the individual in the gratification of any just personal needs, and since its possession frequently leads to the wildest extravagances, to the establishment of false standards of life, and often leads to harmful dissipation and vice, and sometimes even to the corruption of our legislatures, of our administrative offices, and of the judiciary itself in the crafty ways by which we all know human beings, can be misled, a wise public policy should establish a system of government which will restore to the people so much of the swollen fortunes developed by our modern methods as justice demands.
.No thoughtful student will deny that these gigantic fortunes represent values created by the labors and the activities of our people. No man can deny the moral righteousness of restoring to the ‘people hy legacy duty that which they have created and which has been taken from them under legal processes and by fair legal means, in .the .best view of the case, and by crafty, unfair, and illegal means in the worst view of the case.
THE TAX MORALLY AND ETHICALLY JUST.
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