Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/98

 84 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

While many of the contractors engaged in these industries have accumulated property, the larger proportion are persons of small means, and those who possess wealth find more profitable invest- ment for it than in an occupation where but little capital is required.

Building contracts as a rule provide for payments as the work progresses, but I 5 per cent, being usually retained till the com- pletion of the contract. This enables the contractor who pur- chases his material on credit to obtain payments on his contract to meet most of his expenses. With a very small amount of capital, which is turned over many times, he is able to execute a large amount of work. The principal capital employed is that of the producers of building material. As this capital is reported in such industries, to include it also as capital employed in build- ing trades is to count the same capital twice.

The great increase that may be noticed in the number of employes reported, as has been stated, results from the defective enumeration of the previous census. The same is true as to the increase of product. We have here in five industries an increase in the value of the product amounting to almost half a billion, not more than 10 per cent, of which can be due to an actual increase.

An investigation of census reports of valuation shows also an enormous apparent increase of wealth due to deficient earlier enu- merations. Quoting the figures of our census, Mulhall declares : "This is a prodigious increase of wealth and without parallel in the history of the human race" {Dictionary of Statistics]. Discov- ering how greatly not only our own people but the whole world have been misled by comparisons of incomparable census sta- tistics we are surprised that so eminent a statistician and econ- omist as Colonel Wright should remark that census statements of less than the full amount have little disastrous effects. This indicates a failure to perceive the danger of which Robert Giffen, the most eminent of English statisticians, warns his readers in Growth of Capital. Giffen declares : "Country has been compared with country and period with period in the most reckless fashion without any regard to the comparability of the data."