AMERICAN WEALTH.*

MR. INGALLS, already a well-known writer on the American

metal trade, has now taken a wider field. With the intention, perhaps, of providing a counterpart in some respects to Dr.

Bowley's British studies, he has collected and collated American statistics of wealth, home and foreign investments, income, production and consumption. The whole matter is inevitably coloured by the effects of the War on the world, and interest in the facts and deductions cannot be confined to readers in the United States. No one will read this book without strengthening his conviction that the Atlantic Ocean cuts communication between Europe and America just so effectively as Hadrian's Wall now dams the stream of intercourse between England and Scotland. It did not seem to matter before the War that on neither side did the majority of people realize their inter- dependence. To-day it matters intensely. Both sides will suffer proportionately as the sea is allowed to be, or to seem, unbridged.

The primary aim of these statistical studies was to discover whether " the United States had become rich as a result of

the War," or whether the " national wealth had become impaired in virtue of the economic waste." The stern conclusion is a

warning that

" the world became enormously impoverished by the War, and that although the United States suffered less than any other country that was engaged, its position did not escape impair- ment. Consequently the people of the world are confronted with the prospect of a lower scale of living, which will be the case even in the United States."

We are more optimistic than our author generally is because we believe that material poverty can be a stimulus to an effort capable of overtaking losses, and even turning them to gain.

revta, Au4avre, ;diva rat river iyelpu, aura rw ku3x0oLo SadaxaXos," said Theoeritus's fisherman. The real question is, Will the effort be made ? Here again Mr. Ingalls is gloomy because the world has suffered " an impairment of moral conditions." We are quite aware that. since the War the cynic has had such chances • Wealth and Income of the American People. By W. B. Ingalls. G. H. Media Co., York, as never before of wringing our withers by comparing preach- ment with practice, promise with performance. The censor of morals has found his self-imposed task easier than ever. But we do not believe that among all moral energies or intellectual pursuits surgery and aviation alone, have profited by the oppor- tunities of the War. In mechanical invention alone the War produced many novelties that may be turned to good account in peaceful industry. These views, however, are not opposed to the author's belief that a great deal of America's apparent gains before 1917 were illusory ; that during her nineteen months of warfare she spent freely of any wealth gotten in the preceding years, and that since the War her losses may have wiped out the rest. The fall in the values of stocks has been prodigious ; capital put into war-time production, the munition factories erected and a hundred other costly efforts must be written off as valueless : unemployment due to European poverty and other causes- traceable to the War is a waste that is draining her wealth.

Mr. Ingalls leaves his figures for more general questions. He writes, for instance, forcibly on Trade Unionism. His economic views and advice are sound. The share of wealth available for labour is limited by the divisible product ; the purchasing power of wages is their true value ; invention and organization must be stimulated by an adequate share of the gains ; capital in plenty is an advantage to the wage-earner even if he does not save and become a capitalist himself, and so forth. But in spite of correct admonishment to masters to treat their employe.; better there is a somewhat pugnacious tone in his words about 'Trade Unions, and English readers must remember that American unions have not the same place in national life as British unions. The worst that one could imagine a British economist saying of transport workers and coalminers keeping up unduly high wages in essential services at the expense of all their neighbours would be " blackmail," or " holding their country to ransom." Mr. Ingalls says that such a situation " will probably lead to the downfall of labor unionism in the end . . . This will be to the benefit of the national welfare in general."

British readers will turn with the greatest interest to the passages which deal with finance where it is obviously entangled with politics. Mr. Ingalls admits that he sees no immediate solution of the difficulties before us and the United States, which are due to their absorption of most of the gold formerly possessed by Europe. Our Foreign Office cannot have greatly shocked a man who, before the publication of the Balfour Note, wrote :-

" Of our foreign national debtors Great Britain is the most important, but Great Britain herself is a large creditor of other nations on account of war advances. If she could collect her own debts she could easily pay us out of the proceeds. But even without such collection Great Britain may be expected to pay us, anyhow, sooner or later. If we should cancel our credits of this nature, Great Britain would be bound morally to do likewise. The whole question is therefore one that is chiefly between us and the countries of continental Europe."

Mr. Ingalls states very simply the dilemma of Europe's inability to pay in gold and America's unwillingness to be flooded with manufactured goods. Like M. Poincare (but more justifiably in a book than in a Note, and more graciously in sentiment), ho comments on a point in the inter-national accounts, saying :—

" We diverted to warfare the surplus of goods and labor, the surplus over and above what we required for living, instead of using it to build railways, houses, &c. Most of this surplus we ourselves employed, marking it up on our books at high prices, and a portion of it we sold to our European associates, also at high prices. Roughly the scale of prices was about aice that Of 1913."

And of the days when those prices were soaring he says :-

" While the British quickly foresaw the meaning of German aggression, it took the United States more than two and a-half years to do so. In the meanwhile the Allies were fighting our battle as well as their own, and we were profiting materially— to the extent of about five billion dollars."

Among the conclusions he reaches are these two :-

"(i.) The writing-down of the debt of ten billion to five billion would be reasonable and fair. (ii.) The cancellation of the remaining five billion on the ground that we had made about that amount out of the necessities of Europe in 1915.1916 would be generous and chivalrous."

No comment on these suggestions would become us beyond saying to Mr. Ingalls, " Sir, you are generous and chivalrous."