Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/161

Rh been so specified. Thus some of the gold and silver bullion is owned by every person who possesses gold and silver certificates, which he uses as currency. The wharves and drydocks are largely municipally owned. The estimate for the value of ships represents mainly the national fleet. There is certainly a wide distribution in the ownership of the automobiles, about one-third of which is ascribed to the farmers of the country. Also in the ownership of furniture, carriages, clothing and jewelry. Although the well-to-do possess a great deal more of those things per person their number is too small to enable their aggregate of such possessions to loom very big. The stocks of goods are owned partly by the producers of raw materials, including the farmers, partly by the manufacturers who fabricate them, and partly by the merchants, wholesale and retail, who distribute the finished products.

The urban real estate, valued at 78.920 billion dollars, represents about 20 million houses and apartments, outside of the farms. It is well known that to a large extent the American people own their own homes. According to the last census 55 per cent of the families in the United States rented the houses in which they lived, while 45 per cent held title to them. Of the latter about five-eighths of them held their property free from encumbrance, while three-eighths held it subject to mortgage. These percentages are calculated upon all of the dwelling, including those on the farms, but we may apply them to the 20,000,000 urban dwellings without going far astray.

In my “Wealth and Income of the American People” I estimated the 20,000,000 houses and apartments available for use by people other than farmers in 1916