Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/86

72 decade, nor do I refer to the increase in dollar figures due to higher prices. Entirely over and above these contributions to increased figures, we are producing a larger amount of commodities per capita than ever before in our history.

Precise comparisons are difficult to adduce. But exhaustive study from many angles of production over average periods 10 years apart, before and since the war, would indicate that while our productivity should have increased about 15 per cent due to the increase in population, yet the actual increase has been from 25 to 30 per cent, indicating an increase in efficiency of somewhere from 10 to 15 per cent.

For example, there has been no increase in the number of our farmers during the last decade, yet the agricultural community not only feeds an increase of 14,000,000 of population, but has increased its average exports from about 7,500,000 tons to 17,500,000 tons annually. This would show that the individual farmer has increased his efficiency in production by from 15 to 20 per cent in this period.

There are many commodities where we have years since reached a point of saturation per capita and whose industries grow approximately with the growth of population or in increasing exports. There are other commodities where saturation has not been reached. Increasing efficiency not only releases labor and direction for greater production of these things but enables their wider diffusion over the population. A selection of such industries shows a growth of 60 per cent in the last decade.

We have been able to add to our standards of living by the more general distribution of many articles which were either altogether luxuries 10 years ago, or which were luxuries to a large portion of the population. Thus an increased proportion of the population are using electric lights, telephones, automobiles and better housing—and have added movies and what not to their daily routine. A rough estimate would show that we could today supply to each person the same amount of commodities that he consumed 10 years ago, and lay off about 2,000,000 people from work.

Some people have looked upon these conditions of new commodities and services in the daily expenditure of our people as representing extravagances, but as a matter of fact they are no entrenchment upon savings. They are the result of steady improvement in management and method all along the line.

The result has been a lift in the standard of living to the whole of our people, manual worker and brain worker alike. This is the real index of economic progress.

The construction of our buildings, our railways, our plant and equipment generally, naturally tends to expand parallel with the increased demand for consumable goods because people are both more courageous and more easily financed in good times. We have not only the normal growth of the country to meet, but the long-overdue and accumulated deficit. The delays of war and of post-war slump, and our increasing efficiency in production all demand more buildings and transportation facilities.