[Footnote a: Taxable only; all other figures include exempt.]
[Footnote b: Estimated on a gold basis.]
A detailed comparison of the classes of concrete things making up the totals is possible only in the last three sets of figures (1900 to 1912), and they are here given (omitting 000,000).
1900. 1904. 1912. 1. Real property (excepting some items below) 52,538 62,331 110,700 2. Irrigation enterprises [a] [a] 360 3. Agricultural equipment (livestock, tools, etc.) 3,822 4,919 7,706 4. Manufacturing equipment 2,541 3,298 6,069 5. Transportation agencies 11,249 14,434 22,360 6. Telegraph and telephones 612 813 1,304 7. Waterworks (privately owned) 263 275 290 8. Electric lighting plants 403 563 2,099 9. Products (still in trade) 8,294 10,212 21,577 10. Direct goods in use[c] 6,880 8,250 12,758 11. Gold and silver 1,677 1,999 2,617
[Footnote a: No figures for these years.]
[Footnote b: The main items are agricultural and mining products and
imported merchandise.]
[Footnote c: The main items are clothing, personal adornment, furniture,
and carriages.]
§ 5. #Average wealth and the problem of distribution#. The foregoing figures make a most satisfactory showing, and appear to indicate that mere economic problems are rapidly being solved by the growth of national wealth. But unfortunately these figures have little significance in connection with such an inquiry, if indeed they are not badly misleading.
In the first place, the final figures of "per capita wealth" are merely averages; a per capita increase, therefore, may appear when total wealth increases, altho the total may be due to the growth of comparatively few very large fortunes. The fact is evident that vast numbers of individuals and families are nearly propertyless and in so far as this is true there is involved one of the greatest of our socio-economic problems, that of the distribution of wealth and income among the people. The more unequal the distribution, the greater, in all likelihood, is the discontent; and the greater the effort of many men to find some methods by which greater equality may be attained.
§ 6. #Changes in the price-standard#. These figures, moreover, are expressed in terms of the monetary price-unit, in dollars of the gold standard, and therefore the increasing total figure (and correspondingly, the increasing per capita) may be but the reflection of a change in the value of the monetary unit. It is well known that the gold dollar has now less purchasing power than in 1880, and less also than at any intervening time.[2] To the extent that this is true the increase in the figures of wealth (total and per capita) is only nominal and does not indicate increase in the quantity and betterment in the quality of real wealth. This fact is so evident that it would seem unnecessary to call attention to it, if it were not constantly overlooked in citing these figures.
§ 7. #A sum of capital, not of wealth#. Consider further, that the figures here given for wealth really express but the sum of capitals of the individuals (or private corporations) of the nation. These do not constitute a sum of social wealth in any proper sense of the term.[3] Arithmetically it is a fallacious kind of a total, for the sum of the individual capitals contains some items that should be canceled to find the sum of wealth. Moreover, capital is an acquisitive concept. It is an expression of the value of a man's possessions, and not of the utility[4] of them. It measures intensity of desire for goods and not necessarily the degree of welfare. Such a total, therefore, embodies the difficulties of the paradox of value; in some cases increased value reflects a growing scarcity and not greater abundance.[5]
For example, between 1900 and 1915, with the growth of population, the total number of improved acres in farms in the United States increased but little, and the per capita number diminished. At least in part as a result of this fact, the prices of nearly all kinds of food rose rapidly, as did also the price of farm land. The prices (and estimated values) of farm lands are the expression of the individual capitals, which formed each year an increasing statistical total of so-called wealth. The people had less land per capita, and were poorer per capita as respects this item of landed-wealth, had less meat per capita, and had to give more labor in exchange for food, at the same time that the statistical per capita of land values increased.
So it may be as respects forests, coal, cotton, and eventually iron, copper, and many other things. When forests were plentiful, lumber and fire wood were free goods in many neighborhoods. Forests entered into the total of national "wealth" in 1850 and 1860 at a comparatively small sum. But in 1910 when the forests had been half used up they appeared as a greater total and probably as a greater per capita item of "wealth" than in 1850. The figures reflect changes in the paradoxical section of the scale of values, and express scarcity rather than wealth.
Altho the wealth of a nation may not be expressed as a single sum of values that accurately reflects the weal-bringing things composing its environment, some conception of the situation is to be gained by an enumeration of goods in their kinds and quantities and by studying their relations to the life of the people. Objects of wealth may be grouped in various ways. The following may serve our purpose of a general survey of our present resources.
§ 8. #Sources of food supply#. The land area of the country in 1910 was about 1,900,000,000 acres, of which 879,000,000 acres were in farms, this being 46 per cent of the total area. A very small part of the remainder is used for residential and commercial purposes, the rest being barren mountains, deserts, swamps, and forests. Of the total in farms a little more than one-half was improved, 478,000,000 acres altogether, a per capita average of 5.2 acres; and a little less than one-half was unimproved, 400,000,000 acres altogether, a per capita average of 4.3 acres. The improved land produced not merely food but many kinds of materials, such as cotton, wool, hides, and lumber, while much of the unimproved land was either in farm wood-lots, or in rough range pasture. Of course the kinds and amounts of produce per acre vary with the climate, particularly with sunshine and rainfall; possibly the proportion of the area of the United States that is true desert and infertile mountain land is greater than that of any other equal area in the temperate zones. The actual productive capacity per acre of the lands of America cannot be expressed in a very helpful way as a general average per acre, but each area must be carefully studied in respect to its climate, rainfall, and possibility of irrigation and drainage. It is evident that a very large number of economic problems must arise in connection with the land supply for food: such as problems of land-ownership, taxation, irrigation, drainage, forestry, and encouragement or limitation of population. We are just beginning to awaken to the needs in this direction.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean waters near our coasts are other great sources of food, but no statistics are available to show adequately their yield. Few of them are in private possession and they do not appear at all in a total of "capitals," yet they are more important to the nation than a large part of the land area. They are only beginning to be developed artificially by the propagation of oysters, clams, and fish. The development of a proper policy in this matter is one of our economic problems.
There were in 1910 (mostly on farms) about 64,000,000 beef and dairy cattle, 60,000,000 swine, 56,000,000 sheep and goats, and there were raised in the one year nearly 500,000,000 fowls of all kinds.
§ 9. #The sources of heat, light, and power#. The law of the conservation of energy expresses the fundamental likeness of heat, light, and power. The principal sources from which man derives these agencies are coal and falling waters, tho wood is of importance as fuel in some localities. About 500,000 square miles of land (about 13 per cent of the area of the country) are underlaid with coal. These deposits are widely distributed, so that nearly every part of the country is within 500 miles of a mine. The enormous deposits if used at the present amounts per year would last probably 2,000 to 4,000 years, but if used at the present increasing rate (doubling the product every ten years) they would, it has been estimated, last but 150 years. What shall be the actual rate as between these extremes is a question whose answer depends on our economic legislation as to ownership, exploitation, prices, use, and substitution. This is another of our important socio-economic problems.
The one great available substitute for coal as a source of heat and light and power is water power. It is estimated that in 1908 but 5,400,000 horse power was being developed from water falls, whereas about 37,000,000 primary horse power[6] was available; but, by the storage of flood waters so as to equalize the flow, at least 100,000,000 horse power, and possibly double that amount, could be developed. As it requires ten tons of coal to develop one horse power a year in a steam engine by present methods, there is here a potential substitute for coal equal to two to four times our present annual use of coal (about 500,000,000 tons in 1912).
But this does not mean that it would be economical, at present costs of mining coal and of building reservoirs, to make this substitution now. To determine when, how far, and by what methods to develop this water power from lakes and rivers for the use of the people and to make this substitution, is another of our great economic problems.
Petroleum and natural gas, of which our original reservoirs were perhaps the richest in the world, are being rapidly exhausted. These may be merely mentioned as being related to coal in the source of their supply, in the nature of their uses, and in the economic problems to which they give rise.
§ 10. #Transportation agencies#. First to mention among the means of transportation are the navigable waters—oceans, lakes, rivers, and canals, with the necessary equipment of dredged inlets, harbors, docks, locks, and lighthouses. Few of these appear in the total of "capitals," for they are not in private possession. Yet a good system of natural waterways may be greater wealth to one nation than costly additional railroads are to another. Good natural harbors on the waterways leading out to the oceans are a most important kind of national wealth, as are the navigable great lakes within the boundaries or on the borders of a country. Just in proportion as these natural means of transportation are lacking, is the need to build costly artificial means of transportation.
Both in natural and in artificial means of transportation, America is well provided. The straight coast line is 5700 miles long, and the line following indentations of the coast is about 64,000 miles. The Great Lakes with a straight shore line of 2760 miles are the most important inland waterways in the world. The 295 navigable rivers in the country have a length of 26,400 miles of navigable water. About 2000 miles of canals are still in operation. On the waterways some 27,000 American vessels are in use, with a capacity of 8,000,000 gross tons.[7]
There are about 250,000 route miles of steam railroads, or with additional tracks, yard tracks, and sidings, a total of about 370,000 miles. On these are over 63,000 locomotives, 52,000 passenger cars, and 2,400,000 freight and company cars. Besides these are 45,000 track miles of electric railways and nearly 100,000 cars. These railroads include an enormous aggregate of works and structures in the form of tunnels, cuts, banks, bridges, stations, and shops.
There are in the country (1914) about 2,228,000 miles of public roads, of which 10 per cent are "surfaced" roads. No figures are now available of the number of wagons, horses, automobiles, and other vehicles in use on the roads and streets for purposes of transportation.
Many of our economic problems are presented by these transportation agencies, from the question of opening a new dirt road in a rural township to that of building an inter-oceanic canal, from the question whether to have free public roads or toll roads to that of regulating the railroad rates on the whole railroad system of the country.
§ 11. #Raw materials for clothing, shelter, machinery, etc.# The farm lands supply, besides food, a large part of the raw materials for many other goods, such materials as cotton, flax, wool, hides, feathers, lumber, and firewood. The farm woodlots compose about 200,000,000 acres, and the large forests, public and private, about 350,000,000 acres, a total of about one-fourth the area of the country in forests, containing about one-half of the lumber that the country once possessed. The economic problem of a sound forestry policy is one of the largest we have to solve.
The most important other sources of raw materials for industry are the mineral deposits in the earth's surface.[8] This country is stored more bountifully, probably, than is any other country, with the metal ores of iron, copper, lead, zinc, gold, and silver. Aluminum is the most abundant metal, composing about 8 per cent of the crust of the earth, but by present methods it can be extracted only at considerable cost from certain compounds that are limited in amount. The details as to our metal stores are too complex for fuller treatment here, and may be found in treatises on economic geology or on industrial geography. The determination of wise policies as to the use of these stores involves many economic problems, private and public.
Another great class of material wealth is in the form of tools, machinery, and other agencies for carrying on the industrial processes of farming and of manufacturing. These are sometimes called instrumental goods, or the industrial equipment. Still another class consists of the great mass of completed direct goods, such as houses to live in, libraries, museums, school buildings, theaters, all kinds of buildings and equipment for pleasure and entertainment, parks, and pleasure resorts in mountains, at lakes or sea shore. The possession and use of these forms of wealth give rise to some economic problems of public ownership and to others connected with the institution of private property in general, as sketched in the following chapter.
[Footnote 1: It is to be observed that these figures appear under the general title of Part I, "Estimated valuation of national wealth: 1850-1912," and the tables are spoken of (volume on Wealth, Debt, and Taxation, p. 20) as "estimates of the aggregate wealth of the nation as prepared by the United States censuses," but the tables themselves are described (pp. 23-25) as the "estimated true valuation of all property," this phrase being used as equivalent to "wealth." For the definitions of wealth and property see Vol. I, pp. 264-265.]
[Footnote 2: This change will be described below in ch. 6, in treating of the standard of deferred payments.]
[Footnote 3: See Vol. I, pp. 265, 278, 508 for the distinction between wealth and capital.]
[Footnote 4: See Vol. I, p. 25, for the definition of utility.]
[Footnote 5: See Vol. I, p. 510 on the paradox of value.]
[Footnote 6: That is, "the amount which can be developed upon the basis of the flowage of the streams for a period of two weeks in which the flow is the least," all the rest being allowed to escape unused. Van Hise, "Conservation of Natural Resources," p. 119.]
[Footnote 7: These and other figures in this section relate to the year 1913.]
[Footnote 8: Coal has been mentioned above, sec. 9.]