Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 May 1898 — OUR NATIONAL WEALTH. [ARTICLE]

OUR NATIONAL WEALTH.

Our savings banks, being supporter mostly by the middle and poorer cla&s es of people, furnish perhaps the besl indication of the prosperity or adversitj of the masses Gold and silver are much more ex tensivaly used in the West than In the East On the Pacific coast the gold and silver almost supplant the paper money as a circulating medium. According to the eleventh census the wealth of the country was distributed very unevenly, the Northern and Western States being far heavier in proper tion to population than the Southern. The greatest difficulty in estimating the wealth of the United States lies in ascertaining the value of the persona] property, which constitutes a very considerable item of our national wealth. In wealth, Pennsylvania ranks next to New York, having an assessed valuation of $1,683,459,016, owing largely to the enormous manufactures carried on within the limits of this commonwealth, j

An authority on clothing estimates \ that every man, woman and child in ; this country has at least $lO worth of I clothes. This would make the value of j our national garments exceed $600,000 -! 000. The total amount of gold coined at j our mints from 1793 to 1892 was $1,582,- j 000,000; of silver, during the same period, there have been $657,000,000; and of subsidiary coinage of all denominations, $24,000,000. In the year 1891 there were circulating in the United States $1,175,000,000. The gold, silver and currency held In the United States treasury at the sane ttme would Increase the nominal son ttflW* $2,000,000^00.