Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/123

Rh earning capacity of the mines and metallurgical works of the United States under normal conditions.

An idea of the earning capacity of the mining and metallurgical industry of the United States may be obtained in another way, viz., by the examination of the “Statistics of Income’’ for 1918, and comparison of those figures, given for the first time with considerable detail, with the statistics of production reported by the U. S. Geological Survey. It is obviously necessary to consider the mining and metallurgical industry as a unit and base comparisons upon the production of the refined products; in the case of the metals, in pigs, slabs, ingots and bars. Individually there are some companies that mine, others that smelt, and others that refine. There are some perfectly integrated concerns that do all of those things. In such a study as this the industry as a whole must be considered as being in such an integrated position. In all of the following computations net income is the sum reported as such without deduction of Federal taxes. It is probable that the figures include the net income of some concerns operating in foreign countries —especially copper mining companies—wherefore they are not accurately comparable with the statistics of domestic production. However, there is no way of making discrimination on this account and such error as is introduced thereby must be overlooked. Probably it is not large.

The production of bituminous and anthracite coal in 1918 was 678,211,904 tons of 2,000 lb., valued at $1,828,290,287. Coal mining companies in that year reported net incomes of $180,100,595 and deficits of $8,825,418, the net income of the coal mining industry