CHAPTER III
RAILWAY LABOR’S SHARE OF THE NATIONAL
INCOME
The conditions of the war produced an unbalancing of the division of national income, i.e., of the national products, that previously had obtained through natural equilibrium. According to the studies of the National Bureau of Economic Research, after segregating the farmers, who as capitalists and at the same time laborers and consequently are in a class by themselves, there used to accrue to non-agricultural workers about 70 per cent of the national produce. In 1918 the percentage had risen to 77.
I think that the National Bureau of Economic Research understates rather than overstates these percentages. In my own study for 1916 I arrived at 75 per cent against its figure of 67 per cent for that year. Such a difference need cause no concern. In these broad studies we can do nothing better than approximate. No one has computed these percentages for any year later than 1918. Without any doubt the figures have been rising. Conjecturally I estimated 80 per cent for 1919. Of course, as the percentage for labor has increased that for property and management has decreased, and this appears clearly to be at the expense of savings for future developments, of impairment of the national wealth, and of lowering of the scale of living of the property owning classes. These
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