Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/124

110 We may now make a rough correlation of some important data set forth in this and previous chapters. Comparing 1922 with 1913 there was no increase in the production of goods in the aggregate, but the national produce in terms of dollars was written up by about 1.7. Labor as a whole obtained a larger share of the goods available by raising its percentage of the national income from about 70 to something more than 80. This was at the expense of property and management. The inroad upon the largest and weakest branch of the capitalistic class, viz. the farmers, both impaired their scale of living and led them to live to a considerable extent on their principal. Among the well-to-do of the capitalistic class, say about 2 per cent of all the people, there was also impairment in their scale of living and of their principal, but to a less extent than among the farmers, the chief effect upon them being the curtailment of their ability to save. The last appears in the contraction of the national rate of saving from 15 per cent to about 7}4 per cent, and in the diminished production and use of building materials. Even a great deal of the latter has been diverted from the production of capital goods to consumers’ goods.

Notwithstanding this perversion, however, there has not been a sufficient increase in consumers’ goods, the production and supply of them in the aggregate having been no more per person in 1922 than in 1913. Herein we may find the true explanation of the continuance of high prices. The shorter the supply the higher the price, e.g., anthracite coal. The better the supply the lower the price, e.g., rubber. If the general index of inflation, or writing-up of dollars, be 1.7