Originally the surplus was utilized to free the members of the owning class from the grinding drudgery of daily toil, by permitting them to enjoy the fruits of the labor of others. Then it was employed in the exercise of power over the economic and social machinery. But that was not the end--instead it proved only the beginning. As property titles were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and the amount of property owned by single individuals or groups of individuals becomes greater, their incomes (chiefly in the form of rent, interest, dividends and profits) rose until by 1917 there were 19,103 persons in the United States who declared incomes of $50,000 or more per year, which is the equivalent of $1,000 per week. Among these persons 141 declared annual incomes of over $1,000,000. Besides these personal incomes, each industry which paid these dividends and profits, through its depreciation, amortization, replacement, new construction, and surplus funds was reinvesting in the industries billions of wealth that would be used in the creation of more wealth. The normal processes of the growth of the modern economic system has forced upon the masters of life the problem of disposing of an ever increasing amount of surplus. During prosperous periods, the investment funds of a community like England and the United States grow very rapidly. The more prosperous the nation, the greater is the demand from those who cannot spend their huge incomes for safe, paying investment opportunities. The immense productivity of the present-day system of industry has added greatly to the amount of surplus seeking investment. Each invention, each labor saving device, each substitution of mechanical power that multiplies the productive capacity of industry at the same time increases the surplus at the disposal of the plutocracy. The surplus must be disposed of. There is no other alternative. If hats, flour and gasoline are piled up in the warehouses or stored in tanks, no more of these commodities will be made until this surplus has been used. The whole economic system proceeds on the principle that for each commodity produced, a purchaser must be found before another unit of the commodity is ordered. Demand for commodities stimulates and regulates the machinery of production. Those in control of the modern economic system have no choice but to produce surplus, and once having produced it, they have no choice except to dispose of it. An inexorable fate drives them onward--augmenting their burdens as it multiplies their labors. Investment opportunities, of necessity, are eagerly sought by the plutocracy, since the law of their system is "Invest or perish"! Invest? Where? Where there is some demand for surplus capital--that is in "undeveloped countries."