Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/96

82 situation did not become acute until that surplus had been exhausted. Obviously we cannot expect ease and comfort in housing until we begin again to have a surplus, for rent, like other things, conforms to the law of supply and demand. Since the armistice, however, we have failed to build as much as is pressingly needed, much less to make any start upon reaccumulating a surplus.

The capital savings of the American people since 1918 are represented in the mam by the following data (in terms of millions of dollars).

The totals are incomplete in that they do not include what was put into public improvements, public utilities and industrial plant. Investments under those heads are relatively small, however, and there is no reason to suppose that the total savings of the American people during the last three years have been in excess of 7 or 8 per cent of the income.

In my “Wealth and Income of the American People” I estimated the national wealth at the ends of 1916 and 1920 as follows, in billions of dollars: