Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/116

102 We get another reflection of the same thing in the financial data of our savings and capital investments. Indeed all of this is like seeing an object in the several parts of a folding mirror. In each section the reflection is of a different view, owing to a difference in angle, but all of the images are obviously of the same thing. There can be no shadow of doubt respecting the conclusion that in the matters of houses and other buildings (such as schools) and in the means for transportation we were not so well off in 1922 as we were in 1913.

Next to shelter, the most important things in the common life of a person are clothing, fuel and food. We did not have so much of the principal fibers, nor so much leather, in 1920-22 as in 1912-14. In other words, we were not so well off with respect to clothing material. With respect to food the figures are more confusing, and at the same time interesting. We may deduce that the scale of living of the people as a whole improved in the matter of food, not only in the quantity thereof, but also in the character. This may be construed as a reflection of the unbalancing of the previous division of the national income, which gave a larger share to the wage earners and enabled them to eat more and better. This was at the expense of housing and means for transportation, which are provided out of savings. Here again the evidence appears to fall in with other economic data. We shall see the same thing in other matters.

Thus we see the increased luxury of automobiling in the larger consumption of gasoline and rubber; the increased luxury of reading matter in the larger consumption of wood pulp; the increased luxury, or improvement of the scale of living, in the larger consumption of copper and zinc, reflecting more extensive