Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/332

326 the railway corporations succeeded in earning $5.13, or 3 per cent, on the average per year.

The highways of the country are free, and those who feel themselves oppressed by these great combinations of capital are also free to cart their own 14. tons 142 miles in their own way if they want to. For myself I prefer to hire Morgan, Gould, Harriman and the Vanderbilts to do my carting.

The annual appropriation for the support of common schools ranges from less than one dollar per head in many States to five dollars per head in Massachusetts. The average is three dollars per head, which sum assessed on 80,000,000 comes to $240,000,000. Schools are the antidote for liquor—when the money spent on schools exceeds the money spent on whiskey we may boast of our progress.

Our exports to the Philippine Islands in the same year amounted to less than four cents per head of our population. We have wasted nearly two dollars a head for two or three years in the effort to control an export at four cents a head.

I submit this preliminary and partial analysis of consumption for criticism and suggestion. It will require some weeks of close study of the census and other data for its completion. I may hope to finish this work soon after July 1, and expect to prove that my estimate of our annual product at $225 per head will be more than sustained.

In conclusion I may call attention to what I believe to be the facts. The normal rate per capita of our national expenditures at $5 per head, tending in time of peace to diminish, bears a ratio of not exceeding 2y 2 per cent, to my estimate of the national product. Even at the present rate of about $6.50 per head, imposed upon us by our temporary military aberration, it does not reach three per cent.