Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/97

Rh labor for its work. Many persons entertaining the delusion that they were enjoying newly created wealth entered upon a course of profligacy in living. In fact they were squandering in advance what they must earn in the future, and in so far as the physical property of the country was allowed to deteriorate they were squandering also savings of the past, living on the principal of the country, so to speak. Eventually the credits given by the subscribers for Liberty bonds must be cancelled. This can be done only by work and thrift.

Bank deposits and internal loans are, therefore, affairs of the people among themselves and do not appear at all in an inventory of the national wealth. The only things considered as money that appear in such an inventory are gold and silver. All the rest is real estate, live stock, machinery, railways, etc., and stocks of goods. But a relatively small portion of the total is of a nature to support the people if they should cease working, and this—chiefly the accumulated stock of goods—would support them but a little while. What then comprises the internal wealth of the United States and what does it amount to?

Let it be said at the outset that no exact valuation of the wealth of the United States can be made. Even the reports of the Bureau of the Census on this subject have been to a very large extent conjectural. Every Director of the Census, from General Walker down, has recommended that the statistics of capital be omitted from the census of manufactures. W. M. Steuart, the present Director of the Census, has expressed to me the opinion that he does not believe it is possible, in a general census of manufactures, to