Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/126

104 Coal... ccc cece cece eee ee ees $694,195,787 K 0.10 = §$ 69,419,579 Tron... .. cece cece cece eee rene 402,080,119 X 0.08 = 32,166,410 Petroleum...............0..000 178,459,796 X 0.22 = 39,261,155 Copper, lead and zinc............ 182,603,221 X 0.135 = 24,651,434 Gold and ailver*................. 101,044,644 X 0.10 = 10,104,464 Natural gas.................0005 83,726,597 X 0.028 = 2,344,345 Other mines..................... 181,682,550 X 0.132 = 23,982,096

Total net income.......... $201,929,483

mines includes the gold and silver derived from their ores.
 * Gold and silver mines proper. The product of the copper, lead and zinc

A corrective factor must now be introduced. In making the income tax returns for 1918 the system of allowances for depletion had become fairly well developed and pretty full advantage of it was taken. This put the figuring of mining income upon a different basis from what prevailed before the war, when generally the net proceeds were paid out as dividends without distinction as to meaning and it was left to the stockholder to figure amortization in his own way. In 1918 before arriving at $589,372,552 of net income there had been deducted $442,000,000 for depletion. Consequently, the net proceeds before making that deduction must have been about $1,031,000,000 whereof net income was 57.16 per cent. Average net proceeds in 1911-1913 according to my previous method of computation were therefore something like $201,929,483 + 0.5716 = $353,000,000 probably. This is a result that is similar to that of $330,000,000 arrived at by multiplying the reported dividends of $66,000,000 by five. The reported dividends were substantially those of copper, lead, zinc, gold and silver mining companies. The net earnings of that branch of the mining industry according to my second method of figuring should have been about $61,000,000.