“Bread-winners in 1870 engaged in supporting themselves were 12,505,923, or 32.43 per cent” of the population. “The bread-winners in 1880 were 17,392,099, or 34.67 per cent of the total population” of that time. “The bread-winners in 1890 were 22,735,661, or 36.31 per cent.” By “bread-winners” he meant “wage earners, salary receivers ... or any one who was engaged in gainful pursuit,” including “proprietors of whatever grade or description, and all professional persons.”[68] I must here make a diversion to examine this author’s argument. For the purpose of proving that the poor, the producers of wealth, were getting better off from 1870 to 1890 by their gainful pursuits, Mr. Wright has placed in the [SN: MR. C. D. WRIGHT.] same class individuals of incomparable description, and, by making averages upon equally incomparable basis of their gains, logically arrived at the false conclusion that the wages in general had risen during that period of time. And hence, he added that “the rich are growing richer and the poor are getting better off.” He thus arrived at the same nominal conclusion at which Mr. Shearman has arrived in making nearly 56-millions of individuals appear to be in possession of $209 each.[69] And it is exactly in the same way Mr. Wright himself made the per capita wealth in the United States, as a whole, amount to $1,036 for every inhabitant of the nation. The rules of arithmetic are accurate in every calculation. But the nominal distribution of wealth has never made the millions of the people better off; and it has never altered the fact, that in 1890 we had nearly 34-millions of them without property; and we had a little over 7-millions of other individuals owning more than 55½-billion dollars worth of wealth.[70] Whereas, at the same time, there were more than 27-millions of individuals whose aggregate wealth was only $825-millions, which is but $30 to each person.[71] This little diversion from our main thought once more testifies that the increase of the 42-billion dollars worth of wealth which accrued from 1865 to 1890 did not in the least raise the wages of those producers of the wealth who were compelled even to lose their own properties. On the contrary, while the salaries and incomes of some professional persons had decidedly increased, the wages in general had fallen, as we shall see later on. Consequently, the tens of millions of the creators of that wealth appeared to be all the worse off, as we have seen on pp. 85, 86.