Mr. Lucien Sanial, in a most careful analysis of the census for 1900, shows that, classified according to occupations, 250,251 persons possessed $67,000,000,000, out of a total of $95,000,000,000 given as the national wealth; that is to say, 0.9 per cent of the total number in all occupations owned 70.5 per cent of the total national wealth. The middle class, consisting of 8,429,845 persons, being 29.0 per cent of the total number in all occupations, owned $24,000,000,000, or 25.3 per cent of the total national wealth. The lowest class, the proletariat, consisting of 20,393,137 persons, being 70.1 per cent of the total number in all occupations, owned but $4,000,000,000, or 4.2 per cent of the total wealth. To recapitulate: Of the 29,073,233 persons ten years old and over engaged in occupations,
0.9 per cent own 70.5 per cent of total wealth. 29.0 per cent own 25.3 per cent of total wealth. 70.1 per cent own 4.2 per cent of total wealth.
Startling as these figures are, it will be evident upon reflection that they do not adequately represent the amount of wealth concentration. The occupational basis is not quite satisfactory as applied to the richest class. It serves for the proletarian class, of course, and for a very large part of the middle class. In these classes, as a rule, the _occupied_ persons represent wealth ownership. But this is by no means true of the richest class. In this class we have a very considerable proportion of the wealth owned by _unoccupied_ persons, such as the wives rich in their own right, children and other unoccupied members of families rich by inheritance. Mr. Henry Laurens Call, in a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Columbia University, at the end of 1906, made these figures the basis of the startling estimate that one per cent of our population own not less than ninety per cent of our total wealth.
There is a peculiarity of modern capitalism which enables the great capitalists to control vastly more wealth than they own. Take any group of large capitalists, and it will be found that they _control_ a much greater volume of capital than they _own_. The invested capital of a multitude of small investors is in their keeping, and they can and do use it for purposes of their own. Thus we have a concentration of capitalist control which goes far beyond the concentration of ownership. And this concentration of the essential control of the capital of a country becomes more and more important each year. It is recognized to-day that the most important capitalist is not he who himself owns the greatest amount of capital, but he who controls the greatest amount, quite irrespective of its ownership.