Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Current Economic Affairs (1924).pdf/97

Rh At the same time I expressed the opinion that the external credits at the end of 1920 were a very doubtful asset. That opinion has certainly been confirmed by subsequent events. The funding of the British debt to us is on the basis of a reduction of “present value.” The French government has recently declared that France can not pay her debts unless she can collect from Germany.

The American people did not add to their wealth by virtue of war so much as they would have done normally if there had been no war. In point of fact it is doubtful if they added anything. Any idea that we grew rich out of the war is preposterous. Warfare is no device for a people to grow rich, anyway not under modern conditions.

I find no evidence in the statistics of national production or accumulation of wealth that the efficiency of the American people has so increased during the last 10 years as to afford them an enjoyment of a higher scale of living on the whole. The evidence points rather to failure of production to increase commensurately with the population. There are some ominous indications that improvements in mechanicalization and management have been doing no more than offset increasing adversities of nature, and perhaps not even that. The data of the Federal Reserve Board show that the fiscal volume of our exports has not increased, while our imports have increased. In 1912–14 the excess of our exports over imports was about $500,000,000 per annum. In the fiscal year ending with June 30, 1923, it was only about $175,000,000 of inflated value.

In manufactures our production has increased greatly in some things, e.g., automobiles, electrical apparatus,