The increase during the last year has been no exception to this rule.
From a total assessable valuation of $116,767,204 in 1890, her wealth has increased to a total of $142,205,428 for 1891, a gain of over twenty-five millions. The valuation of the State, given by counties, is as follows:
| County | of | Beaverhead | $ 3,175,949 |
| " | " | Cascade | 12,383,864 |
| " | " | Choteau | 5,364,264 |
| " | " | Custer | 6,350,915 |
| " | " | Dawson | 3,025,332 |
| " | " | Deer Lodge | 7,359,589 |
| " | " | Fergus | 4,186,555 |
| " | " | Gallatin | 6,170,381 |
| " | " | Jefferson | 4,917,382 |
| " | " | Lewis and Clarke | 31,081,030 |
| " | " | Madison | 2,948,046 |
| " | " | Meagher | 5,239,882 |
| " | " | Missoula | 8,815,854 |
| " | " | Park | 4,936,451 |
| " | " | Silver Bow | 32,426,794 |
| " | " | Yellowstone | 3,823,140 |
| —————— | |||
| Total | $142,205,428 |
But even this vast sum does not tell the whole story, for Montana's additional real wealth is not included in the assessable property of the State, as the vast millions of the intrinsic value of the silver, gold, copper, coal, and lead mines, and their precious output, are not assessable for taxation—only the improvements. So if the value of all of Montana's mines were put in the calculation of her wealth, what a vast amount of money-value would be placed to her credit. Of the hundreds of her gold and silver mines, two are valued at $25,000,000 each.
The above assessment value of $142,205,428 is made up of real estate, acre property, town lots, railroad rolling stock, road-bed and improvements, and personal property.
Montana's present ratio of population is not quite one person to the square mile, so with an assessment of over $142,000,000 with a population (according to the census of 1892) at 140,000, what will be the value of the State when its population shall have increased to ten persons to the square mile? The calculation is easily made—so within the next decade Montana's population may reach 1,440,000, and if the assessed value then is equal to the present wealth per capita of her citizens, the assessed value will reach the prodigious volume of $1,203,000,000—a calculation not unreasonable, since Montana's population in the last ten years increased 235 per cent.