The Washington bee., 1895-09-21
NATIONAL RESOURCES.
The Productive Capacity OF the United
States.

The Productive Capacity OF the United
States.
In the current number Of the North
American Review, Michael G. Mulhall
the eminent statistician. makes a most
interesting and striking showing OF the
productive power and wealth Of our
country as compared with the other ma
tions of the world. In these days Of uni
versal complaint and dissatisfaction it is
very consoling to read from so eminent
an authority a review Of the productive
energies of the world in which the United
States appears not only foremost and
greatest, but overwhelmingly so.
Taking into account the working power
of men, horses and steam engines, Null
hall declares that the people of the Unit
ed States have at command an energy
which represents 1,940 foot-tons per in
habitant per day. A foot-ton is an ex-
preston used to denote power suffi-
cient to raise one ton a distance of one
foot. Against this, Great Britain. with
all her wealth and all her industrial de-
velopment, can only boast 1,470 foot-tons
per inhabitant; while Germany and
France have only about 900 foot-tons
each per inha abitant In other words,
his disposal more productive energy than
two persons in Germany or in France.
The real difference between the United
States and the European countries, when
We come to figure totals, is still greater
on account of the larger population Of
the United States, SO that as a matter of
fact the United States possesses almost
as much energy within her control as
f{osx
combined. These figures mean that if
we only had some equality of distribu-
ton In the United States, each man, wo-
man and child would have at disposal
several times as much of the good things
Of earth annually produced as the aver
age man. woman or child in Europe. And
even now, with the inequality Of condi-
tions, they mean that the wealth of the
United States. in spite of depression, is
piling up at an enormous rate.
Mulhall, in another table of figures.
shows that an ordinary farm hand in the
United States raises as much grain as
:hree hands in England or four in France,
or five in Germany, or six in Austria,
and this wonderful superiority of pro-
ductiveness he attributes naturally to
the mechanical appliances in common
use III the united SldleS.
Reducing the various farm products of
several nations to their equivalents in
grain, Mulhall furnishes the following
comparative statement of what one farm
hand will produce in an ordinary year in
the countries named:
Bushels of grain
per farm hand.
United States :. .. =. .. :. :. =. :. =. ..475
Great Britain .. .. :. ..228
france --iSo -
Iermany lbs
Italy LID
austria ~
Mulhall makes a similar favorable
showing for the United States in the
amount of money expended annually for
purposes of education. In the United
States it is $40 per inhabitant each year,
il In Great Britain it is s1.30 and in other
European countries the scale runs down
to 25 cents per inha bitant per year in
Italy
Following the same line, our statisti-
clan shows that the number of letters
per inhabitant carried by the mails year
ly is 10 in the United States, as against
the following:
Switzerland =. =. =. .. .. .. .. E. IA
IeTn1any 30
italy :. ..16
Coming naturally to the subject of ac-
cumulated wealth, Mulhall figures that
the wealth of the United States now
amounts to a little more than $1,000 per
person, and he maintains that only Great
Britain, France and Holland have
higher per capita showing. In the aggre-
gate, Americas wealth exceeds that of
Great Britain by IS per cent, although
the ratio per inhabitant Is not quite SO
high; and of this vast total wealth of the
country, Mulhall states that "a per cent.
has been created and accumulated by the
people of the United States since 1910.
1t is impossible to read Mulhalps arti-
Gle without being impressed with the
wonderful productive energy Of our coun-
try, and even during these years of COM
parative depression and seeming retro
gression the calm, clear figures of the
student of statistics showing the rapid
creation and accumulation of wealth
and the superiority of America in pro-
ductiveness will go far to make the
American citizen satisfied that his lot is
cast in the new world.
Robinson Crusoe.