Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/150

128 capacity for the making of 400,000 tons of zinc per annum. How much money we actually put into that I do not know, but if it had been done on the same terms as previous to the war the requirement would have been about $10,000,000. This now has to be thrown away as useless. The zinc industry as a whole is no better off than it was before the war; indeed it has probably been impaired, although in 1915-1916 it was thought to be making enormous profits. Substantially the same thing is true of copper and I imagine that it runs through our entire manufacturing industry. Of course it is well known that after the entry of the United States into the war we put billions into shipyards and ships, aeroplane factories, and chemical works that simply have to be written off. Some of this plant has already been scrapped. More of it will be. Practically all of it must be written off.

At the end of 1920 the American mining, metallurgical and manufacturing capacity was in general overbuilt, and in many cases greatly overbuilt. In making a statement of this nature it is necessary to have a standard of comparison. Such a standard may be assumed reasonably to be the capacity required to meet the requirements of 1913, plus a percentage commensurate with the increase in population, plus a percentage that ought always to be available, and generally is, to take care of sudden, extra demands—peak loads, so to speak. It is a normal characteristic of every industry to have a surplus of capacity, not only to be ready for such peak loads, but also to allow for periodic renovations, for no plant can be operated at 100 per cent of capacity all the time. The normal surplus of capacity is apt to consist largely of plant