Valuation of the United States.

Q. What is supposed to be the value of the annual product of all the capital and labour of the United States?

A. In all probability, not in excess of two thousand millions of pounds sterling. The census estimates for 1880 were £1,700,000,000.

Q. The population of the country in round numbers, in 1880, was fifty millions (50,155,783). Accepting the census estimate of the value of the product of the country for 1880, what would have been the average annual share of each person?

A. About £34.

Q. If each such person was obliged to live on the results of his own labour, what would be the average individual expenditure permissible, to meet the expenses of living?

A. About 2S. per day.

Q. What proportion of the wealth of the United States is represented by the value of land?

A. Fully one-half.

Q. What have been the chief reasons for the rise in the value of the lands in the United States?

A. First. The good quality of the land itself, due to natural causes. Second. Increase of population, due to natural causes, and an immigration unparalleled in the world's history, attracted by the fertility and cheapness of the land. Third. Great facilities for cheap and ready inter-communication. Fourth, and not least, the entire absence of all artificial restrictions on trade, or complete free trade, between the people of the different sections of the country. The tariff had nothing page 12 to do with determining the natural condition of the country in respect to soil, climate, abundance of all minerals and timber, and easy methods of inter-communication, nothing to do with the establishment and perpetuation of free institutions, with facilities for education, or with the natural capacity of our people for turning these natural advantages to the best account.

Q. Has the tariff been influential in restricting the rise in the value of land in the United States?

A. It has, by increasing the cost of all tools and machinery, and by restricting the markets for the products of our land by interfering with free exchanges.

Q. What striking example can be given in proof of the former of these assertions?

A. The railroad system of the United States as it stands today (1884), at a nominal cost of over £1,400,000,000, is calculated to have fairly cost £1,040,000,000; of this cost fully one-fifth, or over two hundred millions of pounds, probably represents the result of tariff taxation for special interests.

Q. Has the value of farm lands in the United States increased uninterruptedly, irrespective of any tariff policy on the part of the Government?

A. All the evidence shows that the value of farm lands has increased more rapidly in the United States when the artificial restrictions on trade and markets were reduced through low tariffs to a minimum.

Q. The aggregate wealth of the United States has been estimated for 1880 at £8,800,000,000. Do these figures in themselves constitute any true evidences of the national welfare?

A. Not in themselves; and for the reason that the welfare of the people consists in abundant production, coupled with equitable distribution and the lightest taxation. The wealth of the few rich does not necessarily diminish the poverty of the many poor; and the wealth of the owners of the iron mines and steel works of the United States, which has been put into their hands by means of an obstructive duty on the imports of iron and steel, represents only a heavy tax, which the people of the country have been compelled to pay, but which neither the Treasury nor the iron-workers have received.

Q. The increase of the wealth of the United States in the page 13 years embraced between 1860 and 1880, has been estimated at £6,000,000,000. As the average population of the country during this period was forty millions, what was the average share of each person of this large increase, as represented by annual savings?

A. $37.5o, or £7 5s.

Q. With this small amount of annual average savings, what has the protective policy of thè United States done in the way of taxing its people under the pretence of protecting their industry?

A. It has taxed every man, woman, and child somewhere from $10 to $15 per head each and every year of this twenty, of which about $8 has gone into the National Treasury, while the rest has gone into the pockets of the protected owners of iron, copper, and coal mines, Bessemer steel, quinine, bichromate of potash, barbed wire, and other privileged persons.

Q. How much is it possible for the people of the United States to save out of their annual product (exclusive of the increase in the value of land) and lay up as new capital for future production or as provision for old age, infirmity, or for their children?

A. Not more, under the most favourable circumstances, and when taxes are light, than from $10 to $15 per annum out of every $100 of annual product. When taxes, as at present, are heavy, and prices are thereby enhanced, and the opportunities for employment are restricted or made irregular, it is almost impossible for those whose earnings are small to save anything.