The reasons why “the largest fortunes are increasing most rapidly” have already been indicated in this and in the preceding chapters. The most potent of these [SN: THE REASONS WHY THE RICH GROW ABSOLUTELY RICHER.] reasons are: 1. The profoundly unjust and abnormal principle of dividogenesure, which further and further underrates the value of human labor energy and overrates the value of mechanical forces in favor of the wealthy. 2. The too high percentages for loans and capital, which deprive mortgagors of the fruits of their labor and cause the losses of property. 3. Abnormal excess of selling prices over cost of production, and lowering prices on raw materials. 4. Different frauds and extortions carried on by means of “watering-stock” and so on. All these and other unjustifiable means are freely used by monopolies and combinations against the general well-being of the United States people who are constantly robbed and speculated upon by a very few members of the nation. As an example of the stock-watering by railroad monopolies, I introduce here the exact paragraphs of Dr. Spahr who, after representing the table of figures of stocks and bonds and the cost of railroads to original investors, says: “It should be observed, however, that the sum upon which the public is paying interest is not the total capitalization of the railroads, nor even the stocks and bonds not [SN: EXTORTION FROM THE PUBLIC.] held by other railroads, but rather the sum upon which five per cent net is realized by the roads. This sum in 1890 was $6,627,000,000.[164] Not from the standpoint of socialism, but from the standpoint of common morality, which condemns as robbery both the refusal of the public to pay interest upon capital actually lent it, and the compelling of the public to pay interest on capital never lent it, _the two thousand and odd millions of railroad capital representing no investment_[165] is simply capitalized extortion. “But not even the fruits of this extortion have gone to the original investors. The expenditures of railroads and the dividends they declare [SN: DIRECTORS OF THE HIGHWAYS.] have been so largely in the hands of loosely controlled directors, that railroad construction, railroad purchases, and railroad speculation have all served as means to divert the property of the stockholders on the outside, into the pockets of the managers on the inside. Nearly all the profits of this extortion from the public have passed into the hands of a comparatively few men intrusted with the management of the public highways.”[166] These passages simply indicate another way of extortion from the public of the wealth it creates. In addition to these crooked ways of concentrating all that the public has and all it produces, [SN: THE TAXES.] let us examine the amounts of the direct and indirect taxes paid by the wealthy and the poor during the same time of seven years. Upon this subject Dr. Spahr speaks as follows: