So much for the _proportion_ of the national product which goes to the landowning class. Let us next inquire how the landowner's share, or rent, is distributed throughout the population. If it were equally divided among all persons, its increase relatively to the shares of the other factors would, from the social viewpoint, be a matter of considerable indifference. On the other hand, if it is secured by a minority of the population, and if that minority tends to become smaller as the share itself becomes larger, we have a socially undesirable condition. In the twenty years between 1890 and 1910, the proportion of farm families in the United States owning farm land, mortgaged or unmortgaged, declined from 65.9 per cent. to 62.8 per cent.; the proportion of urban families owning their homes, encumbered or unencumbered, increased from 36.9 to 38.4 per cent., and the proportion of all families owning homes, encumbered or unencumbered, fell from 47.8 to 45.8 per cent. Of the homes owned by their occupiers, 28 per cent. were mortgaged in 1890, and 32.8 per cent. in 1910.[72] While a decline of two per cent. in the home owning and landowning families in twenty years, and an increase of almost five per cent. in the number of those families who hold their property subject to encumbrance, may not seem very serious in themselves, they indicate a definitely unhealthy trend. Not only are the landowning families in a minority, but the minority is becoming smaller. Nevertheless, when we consider the amount of gains accruing to the average member of the landowning class, we do not find that it is unreasonably large. The great majority of landed proprietors have not received, nor are they likely to receive, from their holdings incomes sufficiently large to be called excessive shares of the national product. Their gross returns from land have not exceeded the equivalent of fair interest on their actual investment, and fair wages for their labour. The landowners who have been enabled through their holdings to rise above the level of moderate living constitute a comparatively small minority. And these statements are true of both agricultural and urban proprietors.