Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/148

126 703,500, the investment of capital being, therefore, $3,023 per person.

The Ford Motor Co., according to Henry Ford in a recent interview, has about 100 million dollars in buildings, and 100 million dollars in machinery. At the maximum it employs about 50 thousand workers, which indicates a machinery installation of about $2,000 per worker. This figure is nearly enough in line with the total for the industry reported by the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, which includes both plant and working capital.

The seven motor-cycle manufacturers of the United States have a capital investment of approximately $18,000,000 and employ about 6,000 men, an average of about $3,000 per man.

The above figures, representing several major manufacturing industries, especially iron and steel, cotton spinning, electrical manufacturing and automobile manufacturing, employing in the aggregate upward of 2,000,000 workers, furnish a strong indication that the plant employed in manufacturing in this country stands at something like $2,000 per worker. In default of anything better, I assume that figure, and in making the assumption consider that all factors of inflation, inclusion of capital other than plant and duplication of plant elsewhere reckoned (under the head of real estate, mines, etc.) have been eliminated.

During the war we put huge sums of money into manufacturing plant. Thus, the automobile manufacturing industry was expanded from $407,730,000 capitalization, employing 146,000 workers in 1914 to $2,126,717,377 capitalization, employing 703,500 workers in 1920. At the end of 1916 we bad 61