142 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [Cuae. IX 
by the railroad and the value of the disservices occasioned 
by it, whether through cost of operation, repairs, renewals, 
or betterments. 
The two ways of obtaining the total social income which 
have just been outlined — (1) by summing the net incomes 
of individual persons as owners, and (2) by summing the net 
incomes from individual articles of wealth as sources —may 
be illustrated by supposing two ledgers to be opened con- 
taining the income for a given community, one ledger 
being devoted to each way. Each page of Ledger No. 1 
would be devoted to the income-account of a particular 
individual, stating in detail, in two columns, the items of 
income and outgo in the minute manner already shown. 
In Ledger No. 2 likewise each page would be devoted to 
the income-account of a particular article of wealth. The 
first ledger would represent, therefore, the distribution of 
income among different persons in the community. The 
summary of such a ledger, arranged according to the mag- 
nitude of the incomes, would give us the “distribution 
curve” of incomes shown by Professor Pareto.! 
Let us suppose, for the sake of illustration, that the fol- 
lowing is such a summary for the United States: — 
DistrisurioN LepgeErR No. 1 
Net Income for 1900 
15,000 millionaire families SLT A $ 2,000,000,000 
100,000 families, incomes ranging from $10,000 to 
B0000° S27 ee ve ae we ee Ce 3,000,000,000 
1,000,000 families, incomes $1000 to $10,000 . . 5,000,000,000 
20,000,000 families below $1000 So a we 4310,000,000,000 
$20,000,000,000 
The second ledger would show the same total income, 
but distributed according to the source which produced it. 
We may suppose a summary of Ledger No. 2 to be as 
follows : — 
! See his Cours d'Economie Politique, Lausanne, 1897, Vol. 11, pp. 
209-345.