Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/494

 MONEY POWER IN THE UNITED STATES

Do you know how many people there were in the country in 1880, thirty years ago? There were fifty millions. Do you know what the wealth was then estimated to be? $43,000,000,000. Ten years afterward, in 1890, there were 62,000,000 persons living in this country; that is a growth of 24 per cent. in ten years. But the growth of the wealth in those ten years was from $43,000,000,000 to $65,000,000,000, which is a growth of 51 per cent. in that decade. Population grows 21 per cent.; wealth grows 51 per cent. In 1900 there were 76,000,000 people; a growth of 22 per cent. in ten years. The growth in wealth was $88,000,000,000, or 35 per cent. in those same ten years. In 1904, the year of our last census, the population was 82,000,000, showing an increase of 8 per cent.; and the growth in wealth was $107,000,000,000. That is 21 per cent. in wealth in four years, while the population was growing only 8 per cent.

The estimated average daily savings in the United States between 1900 and 1904 over and above all consumption, was thirteen millions of dollars.

In 1900, the savings-bank deposits in the United States were $2,300,000,000; and in 1908, eight years later, they were $3,400,000,000, an increase of 47 per cent.

I have it on the authority of the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce of New York that the banking power of the United States is practically 40 per cent. of the banking power of the world. And this I read in a commercial review a few days ago: "The bank deposits of the United States amount to more than double the whole world's known supply of gold. They are about equal to the whole volume of money in the world, counting gold, legal tender, currency, etc. They are greater in value than the world's total amount of gold and silver since the discovery of America, and they would be sufficient to pay more than one-third of the entire debt of fifty leading nations of the world."——"Student Volunteer Movement," 1910.

(2091)

Money Safe With Men of Principle—See .

MONEY, TAINTED

Dr. Watkinson tells us that some years ago two scientists of Vienna made a series of bacteriological experiments on a number of bank-notes which had been in circulation for some time. The result of their researches was sufficiently startling. On each bank-note they discovered the presence of 19,000 microbes of disease—some of tuberculosis, some of diphtheria, and some of erysipelas. More than that, they found one bacillus peculiar to the bank-note—the banknote microbe, so to speak, because it is found nowhere else. It thrives and fattens and multiplies on the peculiar paper of which a bank-note is made. Is there not a parable here?

If every evil use that is made of money were to leave its mark on the coin or bill, how great would be the moral infection thus recorded.

(2092)

Money Transmitting Disease—See.

MONOTONY

Before each of a row of machines in a certain Pittsburg shop, as described in Charities, sits a girl. Each girl picks up a bolt with her left hand, takes it from the left with her right hand, feeds it point downward into the machine. When she has done this 16,000 times, she will have earned ninety-six cents. Unless she or the machine breaks down, such is her ten-hour day.

In these machine-made days, it is not the monotony of such a task which is most impressive. The girl of the 16,000 motions attracts and holds the attention.

With motions fewer in number but infinitely greater in variety, the day's work of a family is done. The house-worker is not tied to a machine. She stands up to her tasks one moment and sits down the next. She may think of other things, and to-morrow will be in its duties and performances a little different from to-day.

The house-worker gets tired. Is it really the same grinding, breaking weariness as that of the girl who sits before the machine and makes 16,000 identical motions in a ten-hour day?

(2093)

Monstrous Treatment—See.

Monument—See.

Monument of Christ—See.

MONUMENTS, MEANING OF

A great monument is erected not because the man to whom it is dedicated needs it, nor because it will alleviate the bodily ail