How We Have Grown.
The population of the United States is more than 100,000,000, and the money in circulation totals $3,419,090,000, while 11,000,000 of the thrifty inhabitants have $4,375,000,000 in the savings banks.
Such is the announcement made by Uncle Sam in a pamphlet issued by the department of commerce. The pamphlet is entitled “Statistical Record of Progress of the United States, 1800-1914.� It gives a “half-century retrospect� and a “clear perspective� of the nation’s quadrupling of population and multiplying a hundredfold of industrial values.
“Since 1850, the population, then 25,000,000, has more than quadrupled,� says the bulletin. Commerce has grown from $318,000,000 to $4,259,000,000, and the per-capita value of exports from $16.96 to $23.27.
National wealth has increased from $7,000,000,000 in 1870, to $140,000,000,000, and the money in circulation from $279,000,000 to $3,419,000,000. For the entire country,[Pg 63] bank clearings have grown from $52,000,000,000 in 1887, to $174,000,000,000 in 1913.
Improved social conditions among the people are shown in that 19,000,000 children are enrolled in public schools and 200,000 students in colleges. The total expenditure of education approximates $500,000,000 a year.
In 1850 there were 251,000 depositors in savings banks. There are now 11,000,000, with deposits aggregating more than 100 times as much as at the middle of the last century.
The value of farms and farm property increased during the last half century from $4,000,000,000 to $41,000,000,000; value of manufactures from $1,000,000,000 to over $20,000,000,000, and the number of miles of railroad in operation from 9,021 in 1850 to 258,033 in 1912.