Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1893 — The Wealth of the World. [ARTICLE]

The Wealth of the World.

Few people, even among professed politicians, have much idea of the wealth of the world, or of the manner in which that wealth is growing. Still fewer have any notion of the potentiality of wealth to increase. M. Jannet quotes the elaborate calculation of an ingenious author to show that IOOf., accumulating at five per cent, compound interest for seven centuries, would be sufficient to buy the whole surfuce of the globe, both land and water, at the rate of f 1.000.000 f. (£40,000) the hectare. The actual growth of riches has not hitherto assumed such iuconvenient proportions. M. Jannet cites various authorities to show- that the wealth of the United Kingdom exceeds £1(1.000,000,000; that of France, £8,000,000,000; that of all Europe, £40,000.000,000; that of the United States, £14,000,000,000. If we plaoe the w ealth of the rest of the world at £26,000,000,000, we shall arrive at an aggregate of £80,000,0' KJ.OOO. We should have, we may add, to multiply this vast sum 30,000 times before we reached the total to whioh, according te M. Jannet’s ingenious authority, 106 f., accumulating at 5 per cent compound interest for 700 years, would grow. The figures we have given are so vast that they convey no appreciable idea to the ordinary reader. It may assist the apprehension if it he added that France, on an average, possesses more than £.OO, the United Kingdom more than £250 for each member of the population. Just 200 years ago Sir W. Petty estimated the entire wealth of England only £2--0,-000 000. Two centuries, therefore, have increased it furtyfold. But the chief additions to it have been made in the last fifty years, and we believe that we are not far wrong in saying that the ►urn which is annually added to the capital of the United Kingdom amounts to £2OO 000.000, or, in other words, is nearly equal to its entire wealth at the time of the revolution of 1688.—(Edinburgh Review. It is only the women who can lawfully hold up a train.—(New York Jour nab