It should be noticed again, that the differences in the family averages of the corresponding groups of the two tables, depend on the differences in the [SN: AVERAGES OF FAMILIES’ WORTH DIFFER.] numbers and in the aggregate wealth of the same groups of the tables. And these differences could not be avoided, since the two authorities have made a different classification of the families of different worth. But the comparative importance of the two tables consists in the fact, that the last group of the 1st table shows the extremely abnormal concentration of wealth in [SN: THE RICH AND THE POOR GROUPS.] the hands of 126,750 families, which possess more wealth than the remaining 12,563,402 families do, on the one hand. While, on the other hand, the first group of the 2d table shows that there have been 6,871,099 families without real property; and the second group shows, that there were 1,483,356 families in debt and in danger of losing their properties, and that both these groups of families have been in the state of economic slavery to the wealthy few. But we shall examine their conditions of existence later on. GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND GERMANY. “The distribution of private property in Great Britain and Ireland in 1891,” was such that it was said “that less than 2 per cent of the families of the United Kingdom [SN: THE PROPERTYLESS IN BRITAIN.] hold about three times as much private property as all the remainder, and that 93 per cent of the people hold less than 8 per cent of the accumulated wealth. There remains, therefore, nearly 6,000,000 families”—i. e., 30,000,000 individuals—“or more than three-fourths of the people of Great Britain and Ireland, without any registered property whatever. They have indeed their household goods, but the total value of these can hardly exceed £100,000,000,”[44] which is little over $16 to every individual. “The ownership of land is an important factor in the social condition of a people,” says Mayo Smith.[45] And “if we contrast the [SN: DISTRIBUTION OF LAND IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND.] peasant proprietorship system of France, with more than 4,500,000 owners of land, with the landlord system of England, with its 325,000 owners, the social as well as the economic influence must be very different”[45] in the two nations. Certainly the French people feel and enjoy economic freedom, while the British people are pressed down by an economic slavery. In fact, the statisticians seem to agree that the distribution of wealth, even in Paris, the capital of France, and in Berlin, the capital of Germany, is proportionally much more equal than it is in the nation of Great Britain or in that of the United States, although it is natural that the largest cities, as a rule, have the distribution of wealth much worse than the nations behind them. [Illustration: ILLUSTRATIVE CHART.