As to these taxes Dr. Spahr says that “from the incomes less than $1,200 less than three per cent is taken; from the incomes above $5,000 seven per cent is taken. Nevertheless, even these relatively [SN: THE TOTALS OF TAXES PAID IN SEVEN YEARS.] humane burdens rest twice as heavily upon the property of the poorer classes as upon the property of the rich. When these local taxes are joined with the national, the aggregate tax is one-twelfth of the income of every class. There is no exemption of wages. All the resourceless individuals,[172] even the absolute slaves of dividogenesure, who divide the results of their labor with the wealthy, are compelled to pay taxes from their wages. And “the wealthiest class is taxed less than one per cent on its property,” says Dr. C. B. Spahr, “while the mass of the people are taxed more than four per cent on theirs.”[173] Consequently we see that the 1,695,117 families whose wealth, at the end of 1897, aggregated to $79,325,000,000 worth, paid $3,455,963,952 of the national and local taxes. While the 12,755,310 families whose aggregate wealth, at the same time, was reduced to about $7,000,000,000 worth, also paid $2,354,179,059 of these taxes, though these families could not have any net income at all. Whatever might be the gross income of the 12,755,310 increased families under the network of imposition spread by the combines, they could not have any net income [SN: THE PROPERTYLESS IN 1897.] at all, because at the end of 1897 these families represented about 63,150,136 individuals of a multiple expenditure in every individual case. And as these families include about 7,832,640 propertyless families which represented about 38,785,279 homeless individuals, each of which in addition to his multiple expenditure, is obliged to pay rent for shelter and to pay for permission to labor, the multiple expenditure of every one of these, therefore, surpasses that of each individual of the remainder of the population. It would, however, be wrong to suppose that we had only 7,832,640 propertyless families at the end of the period. For beside these families there were thousands of the mortgagor [SN: NOT ALL THE PROPERTYLESS COUNTED YET.] families in the beginning of 1891 which held the last pieces of the mortgaged property. And they could not but lose the very last under the heavy pressure of the combines and of the taxation, thus becoming propertyless, too, though we are unable at present to ascertain their number. Yet we may be sure of the fact, that the more propertyless families we have, the more house and farm rent they must pay to the wealthy; and hence the more rapid the concentration of the wealth and more extensive slavery of dividogenesure must be caused thereby.