Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 79, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1907 — ERA OF PROSPERTTY. [ARTICLE]

ERA OF PROSPERTTY.

Country Phenomenally Prosperous . / Doring Last Tela Years. We are hearing a good deal these days to the effect that the country has been phenomenally prosperous during the last ten years—more so than ever before In- its history. The politician who thinks it incumbent 6n him to' make out a rousing case for the Dingley tariff as the fount of every blessing la especially emphatic in making this assertion. He is not going into figures to prove lvis case just now, but in the fullness of time we shall hear him quoting liberally from the volume of the "Statistical Abstract” which has just been issued by the bureau of statistics of the department of commerce and labor and which contains comparative tables showing the economic progress of the country as far back as data are available. need not expect him to draw anything from this treasury of information that does not tend to maintain the general statement that our prosperity under the Dingley tariff has surpassed anything in the past history ■«f the country and has been little short of miraculous. There is one comparison which comprises the whole macter In a nutshell so far as that statement is concerned. That is the comparison of wealth per head of population at different times. If we accept tiie “Statistical Abstract” as good authority this comparison must be taken as conclusive, for if prosperity is not shown by the per capita incircaseTn wealth It cannot be shown by statistics at all. But this evidence is pretty sure to be ignored by those who assure us that our prosperity of late has never been equaled. It Is undoubtedly true, and nobody will care ttf deny it, tnat we have befn enjoying substantial prosperity, besides an appearance of prosperity with nothing substantial behind it, since the passage of tEe Dingley tariff, and that we have been especially prosperous during the last six years. But we need not go further back in the records from which the government statisticians get tl*cir facts than the year 1880 to show that our recent prosperity has not been so greatly beyond anything, ever before known. According to the abstract our,wealth per head of population In 1880 was *BSO. In 1900 it was £1,038. The' increase in th-f-ten years was $199, or a fraction over 22 per cent. In 1900 our per capita wealth was $1,1G5. The increase over 1890 was $127, or close to 12*4 per cent That was the panic One would think from the tremendous outcry raised about hard times in those years that the people were growing poorer—that they were living on what they had saved during the good times gone before. But they were doing nothing of tiie kind. They were producing all that they consumed and something to lay by besides—something like $127 for every man, woman and child, or more than $9,700,000,000 for all of them together, oi enough to reproduce nearly all the railroads then in the country and their equipment, or upward of $2,500,000,000 more than the entire wealth of the country in 1850 according to the census for that year. Now we come to the alleged unprecedented prosperity. According to the same official authority our per capita wealth increased from $1,105 in 1900 to $1,310 in 1900. The increase was .$145 per head, or less than 12% per cent In six years. At this rate the increase for the entire decade, beginning with 1900 may be a little more than 22 per cent, the increase from 1880 to 1890. It may be less. There is nothing in the official figures, therefore, to warrant the assertion that the country has prospered beyond all precedent since the enactment of the Dingfey tariff. It has prospered. Nobody denies or cares to deny that. So far as its prosperity may have been due to legislation we ought probably to thank the gold standard legislation as much as the tariff legislation.

As a matter of fact, the enormously Increased world’s output of gold is entitled to more credit than any legislation, and the Industrial energy and genius of our people Is entitled to more credit than all three of the other caused uamed. „ It Ls not creditable to us as a people claiming to be highly enlightened to ascribe all our prosperity to some act of congress and all our adversity to some other act of congress. And It Is not creditable to our statesmen that they encourage the propensity of people to place a superstitious trust in statutory charms or fetiches. The people owe their prosperity to tbelr natural environment and their own efforts, not to acts of congress.— Chicago Chronicle.