THEORIES OF INCOME.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXXI, 23 February 1916, Page 2

THEORIES OF INCOME.

A BOOK THAT CAUSED TROUBLE. The University of Pennsylvania recently dismissed its Professor or Political jiiconomy, Professor Scott Nearing, because of the economic gospel expressed by him in a book on "Income." "The time has ccfme when a new classification of the reasons for paying income must be formulated," says Pro--fessor Nearing. "This classification will be based on function rather than on tradition. It will be made personal and concrete rather than impersonal and abstract. ''The distinction between property income and service income measures the relation of the income earner as an individual to the productive process. The capitalist and the landlord receive returns for the ownership of property; they therefore receive property income. The laborer receives returns for the expenditure of energy; he therefore receives service income." This classification is the basis of his revision of the old economy, and he illustrates his meaning by example. The owner of coal-bearing land sells mining rights; he "did nothing except to grant permission for the use of his land." The capitalist who advanced ' the funds for mining "merely signed his name to a paper instructing the bank to transfer credit." A man who wishes to build rents a site; "the owner of the land need make no exertion. He simply holds his title." A man invests in railway bonds; "from the day when he makes his investment he need never lift a finger to serve his fellows." Professor Nearing argues that the workers get- less than is their right, and that society should remedy the wrong. In support of his proposition he makes elaborate statistical examination of service income and property income, finding workers badly paid s and owners over-paid. His conclusion is that "hereafter no one need discourse on the theme of the spendthrift laborer and the ensuing hardship of his family. The actual amounts paid to the men and women who do the work of the industrial world are extremely small. Current wage accounts placed side by side with tne expense accounts of thousands of families whose sole claim to income rests upon the ownership of property are startling in their paucity. "Each year enormous payments are beino; made to the owners of property in the United States in return for their bare ownership. At the same time, the workers, whose efforts are responsible for bringing these values into being, receive in many cases returns which sound like mere pittances."