CLASSIFICATION OF SUCCESSIONS ACCORDING TO NET Value, 1903 and 1904.*

*Annuaire Statistique, 1903, p. 285, and 1904, p. 231. In these two years the value of donations and successions together was 12,190.2 mil. francs, so the above statistics relate to five-sixths of the wealth of the country. See Annuaire for 1905, p. 78. The British figures include inter vivos gifts, I suppose as "portions of estates." They amount to much less than in France, as we should expect, on account of dotation and similar customs prevalent in the latter country.

Yet, if we may accept the conclusions of the French authority D'Avenel, there has been a pronounced tendency to concentration in France in the last century. His summary statement is, "The richest men of to-day are 6 times as rich or, comparing those of equal fortune, 12 times as numerous, as the richest personages of the old régime; they are 10 times as rich or 20 times as numerous as the richest princes of feudal times."* After making much allowance for the unrelativity of this proportion, the statement may be accepted as indicating tendency towards concentration.

The same authority estimates the number of persons in France with an income of 200,000 francs at 1,000.† There appear to be as many as 4,000 millionaires in the United States.‡ It appears, therefore, that we have, roughly, twice as many millionaires in proportion to population as France, though our per capita wealth is about the same.

For Germany it is necessary to test concentration and its tendency by other material than statistics of inheritances. The best available material is income statistics.

Income statistics show something besides concentration of wealth. But they may show that among other things. For the largest incomes may be considered to be due almost wholly to income from property. These large incomes from property are only the cap of a change which probably affects the pyramid of incomes from top to bottom in the direction of concentration. The growth of the salaried class, known from other evidence,§

* Revue des Deux Mondes, February, 1906, p. 861. ↑ Ibid., p. 866.

The New York Tribune's List of American Millionaires (1892) gives a few more than this. Though not of a nature to be quantitatively reliable, the estimate has been considerably used for want of something better. The Massachusetts probate figures indicate a corresponding number of millionaires, so the number 4,000 may be considered a fair though rough approximation, and rather an understatement for the present date.

§ A study of occupation statistics and other data throwing light on the growth of the salaried class is only indirectly important for the purposes of this article. Concentration of wealth and concentration of incomes are different matters. But, if the class of middling incomes is being reinforced by the growth of the salaried class, and if, nevertheless, that class is no more than, or barely more than, holding its own, as compared

accounts for the increased number of middling incomes. These cannot, therefore, be balanced against the increase of very large incomes. On the contrary, they seem rather to be taking the place of moderate propertied incomes. But, if the growth of very large incomes is enough to outweigh the growth of the

with the increase of large fortunes, this is a strong indication of concentration of property and of income from property.

There has been of late, in fact, a very noteworthy increase in the salaried class relative not only to the number of entrepreneurs, but also to the number of "wage-earners." For the tendency in manufactures we need only to cite the figures of the latest United States Census of Manufactures, that for 1905. In the five-year period 1900 to 1905 salaried officials, clerks, etc., increased in number 42.7%, while the number of wage-earners increased but 16.0%. In the German statistics of occupations the class of Angestellte corresponds to our "salaried officials, clerks, etc." The number of these at the dates given was as follows (the data are as given by Zahn, Conrad's Handwörterbuch, ii, p. 604):

The increase in the total number of persons occupied was 17.80 per cent. Entrepreneurs employing assistants increased, in the period from 1882 to 1895, 1.3 per cent.; laborers, 62.6 per cent.; officials, 118.9 per cent. (Schmoller, "Grundriss," p. 436.) The salaried class is clearly gaining ground, though the propertied middle class is losing. The connection of both of these tendencies with modern industrial developments is obvious.

These statistics suggest a line of thought and investigation, which, however, does not promise readily to lead to a positive issue. If the question be asked, how far the growth of the "great industry" directly and positively favors the increase of the middle class as some seem to think it does-the difficulties in the way of arriving at a convincing conclusion are many. If would be necessary to know how the salaried class compares with the small-propertied class as regards economic condition, in particular how the different kinds of income, one kind being partly an income from goods, are to be weighted for comparison. Assuming that the two are to be accepted as equivalent middle classes, it would then be necessary to show that the salaried class was, as compared with the proportion of the small-propertied entrepreneurs to the total of those occupied in small-scale manufacturing, either a larger and not decreasing proportion of the total occupied in largescale production or that it was as large a proportion and gaining ground. And, if the two members of the comparison are not constant in character, changes in their composition and income must be taken into account. The number of variables is not small.

The growth of the salaried class may yet be the means to the reinvigoration of a small or middle propertied class, owners, this time, of abstract property, that is, of bonds and other securities." In power of saving, moderate incomes appear to have the advantage as regards subjective factors. On the objective side, too, in the field of investment, the evolution of abstract property appears to be putting the possessors of such income on the same plane with the possessors of large fortunes.

salaried class, the evidence of concentration is clear and strong. Recently Adolf Wagner has worked over the later and very reliable Prussian income statistics, with results given in the following table:

Size of Income (Marks).

1892.

Prussia: Per Cent. Distribution of Incomes.*

1896.

1902.

Numbers. Amounts. Numbers. Amounts. Numbers. Amounts.

*Zeitsch. des Preus. Statist. Bur., 1904, p. 255.

† Ibid., p. 263. Like figures are given in the Bul. Inst. Internat. de Statist., vol. xiv, Part III. Certain insignificant inconsistencies in the ratios above are in the original tables.