Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/158

136 exported, about 9,000,000 were in use and 2,000,000 had been scrapped. The average term of service is computed at six years, which I think istoohigh. Up to the present time the replacement market had never exceeded 500,000 per annum, but Mr. Ayres considers that there is prospect that it will amount presently to 1,500,000 per year. Even so he regards the automobile manufacturing industry as being greatly overbuilt and foresees extensive price-cutting in the competition to get business.

Although this is a far less optimistic view than is taken by the automobile manufacturers themselves, my own is less optimistic than that of Mr. Ayres. The automobile has, to be sure, come phenomenally into our economic life, with immensely beneficial results and coincidentally enormous abuses. Mr. Ayres considers that it is “ plain that after people have become accustomed to using automobiles they will not give them up unless virtually forced to doso.”’ That is unfortunately just what is likely to happen. Discussion of this subject is, however, properly deferred to a later chapter.

I estimate the value of the electric light and power plants, privately owned, in the United States at 2.9 billion dollars in 1916. For 1917 the Bureau of the Census gave $3,060,392,141; and for 1920 it gave $4,058,000,000. I think that the latter figure