Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/159

Rh probably reflects more or less inflation, i.e., the inclusion of new plant at war prices. The great increase in valuation from 1917 to 1920, amounting to about one billion dollars in three years tends to support that view. However, it is well known that the last five years has been a period of great electrical expansion. A recent survey of the industrial motor loads served by central stations in this country, made by the Electrical World, shows that on Jan. 1, 1915, the number of sta- tionary motors served by central stations was roughly 575,000, while on Jan. 1, 1920 the number had doubled. The connected motor load was roughly 6,100,000 hp. on Jan. 1, 1915, and 12,900,000 hp. on Jan. 1, 1920. The major part of the energy developed in central stations is now distributed for power, the proportion used for lighting having been only 34.5 per cent in 1915 and only 28.4 per cent in 1919.

An approximate valuation of the privately owned gas plants in the United States at the end of 1916 was 1.25 billion dollars; at the end of 1920 about 1.5 billion dollars. These figures have been estimated for me by Oscar H. Fogg, secretary of the American Gas Association. I conjecture that there is some inflation in the figure for 1920.

The Panama Canal cost $368,500,000. The New York Barge Canal cost $219,898,084. Here we have a total of about $600,000,000 in these two enterprises. According to data gathered by the U. S. Census Bureau for 1916 the cost of other canals and canalized rivers_in the United States at that time had been