Do you know how many people there were in the country in 1880,
thirty years ago? There were fifty millions. Do you know what
the wealth was then estimated to be? $43,000,000,000. Ten years
afterward, in 1890, there were 62,000,000 persons living in this
country; that is a growth of 24 per cent. in ten years. But the
growth of the wealth in those ten years was from $43,000,000,000
to $65,000,000,000, which is a growth of 51 per cent. in that
decade. Population grows 21 per cent.; wealth grows 51 per cent.
In 1900 there were 76,000,000 people; a growth of 22 per cent.
in ten years. The growth in wealth was $88,000,000,000, or 35
per cent. in those same ten years. In 1904, the year of our last
census, the population was 82,000,000, showing an increase of 8
per cent.; and the growth in wealth was $107,000,000,000. That
is 21 per cent. in wealth in four years, while the population
was growing only 8 per cent.
The estimated average daily savings in the United States between
1900 and 1904 over and above all consumption, was thirteen
millions of dollars.
In 1900, the savings-bank deposits in the United States were
$2,300,000,000; and in 1908, eight years later, they were
$3,400,000,000, an increase of 47 per cent.
I have it on the authority of the secretary of the Chamber of
Commerce of New York that the banking power of the United States
is practically 40 per cent. of the banking power of the world.
And this I read in a commercial review a few days ago: “The bank
deposits of the United States amount to more than double the
whole world’s known supply of gold. They are about equal to the
whole volume of money in the world, counting gold, legal tender,
currency, etc. They are greater in value than the world’s total
amount of gold and silver since the discovery of America, and
they would be sufficient to pay more than one-third of the
entire debt of fifty leading nations of the world.”--ALFRED
E. MARLING.--“Student Volunteer Movement,” 1910.
(2091)
=Money Safe With Men of Principle=--See PRINCIPLE.