Thus the value of the labor of the immigrants from 1850 to 1860 was fourteen hundred and thirty millions of dollars, making no allowance for the accumulation of capital by annual reinvestment, nor for the natural increase of population, amounting, by the census, in ten years, to about 24 per cent. This addition to our wealth by the labor of the children, in the first ten years, would be small; but in the second, and each succeeding decennium, when we count children and their descendants, it would be large and constantly augmenting. But the census shows that our wealth increases each ten years at the rate of 126.45 per cent. Now, then, take our increase of wealth in consequence of immigration as before stated, and compound it at the rate of 126.45 per cent, every ten years, and the result is largely over three billions of dollars in 1870, and over seven billions of dollars in 1880, independent of the effect of any immigration succeeding 1860. If these results are astonishing, we must remember that immigration here is augmented population, and that it is population and labor that create wealth. Capital, indeed, is the accumulation of labor. Immigration, then, from 1850 to 1860, added to our national wealth a sum more than one third greater than our whole debt on the 1st of July last, and augmenting in a ratio much more rapid than its increase, and thus enabling us to bear the war expenses.
As the homestead privilege must largely increase immigration, and add especially to the cultivation of our soil, it will contribute more than any other measure to increase our population, wealth, and power, and augment out revenue from duties and taxes.
We have seen that, by the Census (p. 195), the total value of the real and personal estate in the United States was, in—
| 1860, | $16,159,616,068 |
| 1850, | 7,135,780,228 |
Increase from 1850 to 1860, 126.45 per cent.
At the same rate of increase, for the four succeeding decades, the result would be, in—
| 1870, | $36,593,450,585 |
| 1880, | 82,865,868,849 |
| 1890, | 187,314,353,225 |
| 1900, | 423,330,438,288 |
If we subtract one fourth from the aggregate, we will find that our public debt constitutes less than one half of one per cent. of the increase of our national wealth. This debt, then, does not exhaust our capital, but effects only a small diminution of the rate of augmentation.
If we look at the causes of this vast increase of our national wealth, they will be found mainly in the enormous extent of our fertile lands, the vast emigration from Europe, and the constant addition of new States to the Union. Thus, from 1850 to 1860, four new States were added to the Union. These four States were almost an untrodden wilderness in 1850, but in 1860 were rich and flourishing States, with a population of 638,965, and an aggregate wealth of $331,809,418. Within this decade, from 1860 to 1870, at least six new States will be added to the Union. This is evident from a reference to our present Territories, as follows:
| Dacotah, | 95,316,480 | acres. | |
| Nebraska, | 48,636,800 | " | |
| Indian, | 56,924,000 | " | |
| Idaho, | 208,878,720 | " | |
| Washington, | 44,796,160 | " | |
| Nevada, | 52,184,960 | " | |
| Utah, | 68,084,480 | " | |
| Arizona, | 80,730,240 | " | |
| New Mexico, | 77,568,640 | " | |
| Colorado, | 66,880,000 | " | |
| ————— | |||
| Total, | 800,000,480 acres. |