AMERICAS WEALTH INCREASES.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10919, 13 March 1907, Page 5 (Supplement)

AMERICAS WEALTH INCREASES.

REMARKABLE FIGURES GF PROS PERITY.. NEW YORK, Jan. 5. ! Some remarkable comparisons of the wealth of the United. States and that of European countries are made by Mr. L. G. Powers, chief- statistician of the United States Census Bureau, m the annual financial review of the New York Herald. . The estimated value of the wealth of the United; States, exclusive of the -Alaska, Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the Philippines, m 1900 was £17,700,000,000 and m 1904 £21,400,000,000. " "The latest estimates oi European national wealth— .hose of Mulhall— are for 1896. In .that year the wealth of Great Britain was estimated at'£ll,soo,---000,000 and of Russia as £6,200,000,000. The total for the two was £17;700,000,---000, which is practically" identical with the estimate for the United States m 1900. AU known facts tell of greater wealth accumulated m the United States since the years mentioned than m the countries named. "Hence it is safe to assume that the' wealth of the United States differs but little from that of Great Britain and Russia combined, and is slightly m exC6£.S " v -'' " " - ; ; Amazing record,' ' ' .0 ■ .' "In like manner the property of the United States at the present time ' is doubtless slightly m excess of the combined wealth of the richest nations of Continental Europe — France/ with an estimated valuation m 1896 of £9,400,---000,000, and . Germany, with £7,800,---000,00 total of £17,200,000,000. "The remaining countries of Europe may be grouped together. Those for which' we have estimates 'give an aggregate of £14,300,000,000, as follows :— ' Austria ... ...£4,300,000,000 Italy ...... ...3,000,000,000 Spain . ■■■ ...... 2,300,000,000 Belgium \ .... ... 900,000,000 Danubian States ... 900,000,000 Holland ... ... 800,000,000 Sweden and Norway... 700,000,000 Denmark • ... ... 400,000,000 Portugal ... ... 400,000,000 Switzerland ... ... 400,000,000. Greece ... ... 200,000,000 "No estimates are given of Turkey or Hungary, but allowing a liberal estimate for these countries, it is found that the wealth of the United States is as great, if not greater, than all these lesser countries of Europe, arid that it is at least one-third as great as that of all Europe. "In the four years, 1900 to 1904, the estimates of the census recorded an increase iv our wealth of £3,700,000,000, or as much as the estimated ')- total national wealth of Italy and Portugal, of Spain, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, or of Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece, arid the -Danubian States: VGOLDEN LABOUR. ' '''-, "From. 1890 to 1904 the wealth of- the United States, according td the estimates for the years mentioned, increased £8,400,000,000, or as much as the national wealth of the United States m 1880, and more than the existing wealth of any European nation with the exception of Great Britain and France. "From 1850 to 1904— save for the destructive interruption of the civil war— labour had added to the wealth^of the; nation at air average rate per annum of from £36 to £37 for each family m the land at the time. ' "Every time the sun makes its daily course it finds . this nation £2,000,000 richer when its' last rays linger at the golden gates of California than;' when they lighted rip the granite hills of Maine. "The story of a single year's- creations m the United States at the present time must needs bo a Jong catalogue, with its pictures of farms carved out of the wilderness, railways built across trackless prairies, business houses rising to a height above; the old pyramids of Egypt, factories throbbing with creative life and stores full of the fruits of prol dustive art.". "* It is estimated that the wealth of Britain is only increasing at the rate of £1,400,000 a week.