Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/180

158 of the company half the stock was allotted for the property and half for the patents.

As I have previously remarked the wealth of the country in its newspapers and periodical press is far greater than is represented by the mechanical plant. A printery that is used for issuing catalogues is simply a factory, a part of the manufacturing machinery of the country, but while a newspaper may possess a factory its chief value is of another sort. I have known a periodical to be bought for a million dollars, and to have been well worth the price, which did not own any physical property outside of a few thousands of dollars worth of office equipment. In such cases the whole value is in the fame and reputation of the paper, but while that is an intangible thing it is nevertheless the result of accumulated work just as much as are constructions of brick and mortar.

Of a similar nature is the fame acquired by some special commodities and manufactures as the result of diligent and costly advertising. In that, too, there is the evidence of stored work that is just as honest and just as useful as is that of the artisan.

More elusive and less capable of being understood by the public is the wealth of the nation in managerial experience. The mines and factories of a country would have no earning power unless the people possessed the knowledge how to use them effectively. This was learned in Russia after the intelligentsia had been driven out of that land, or otherwise extinguished. There was something pathetic in Lenin’s frank admission in 1920 that the proletariat did not know how to manage the agencies of production, the pathos of it being in the fact that such a terrible experiment had