OUR DISTRIBUTABLE WEALTH. (TO THE EDITOR OP THE " SP
EOTATOIL".1 Sin,—The question what wealth there is to distribute by fair racans and foul may perhaps be now nearer the domain of practical politics than it was a hundred years ago ; at least nervous people think so. A very interesting paper -was read last week by Mr. W. J. Harris before the Royal statistical Society, and Mr. Harris estimates Great Britain's total realis- able wealth at nine thousand millions sterling, or 2207 per capita if distributed. So that if the State appropriated all there is and could realise it for cash, and could invest the cash at four per cent., it would afford an income of fourpence per capita per diem. The late Mr. Edward Atkinson, of Boston, a very painstaking statistician, a Free-trader crying in the wilderness, analysed the wealth statistics of the United States from their Census of 1880 in a work entitled." The Distribution of Products." After deducting taxes, and the consumption on the farm by the farmer and his hands, be found that what he described as the "commercial product"—the gross -product for sale from all sources, farms and mines and forests and factories—aggregated annually nine thousand million dollars, of which total be showed that eight thousand one hundred millions were paid in wages to labour. The increase of wealth in the United States is, if their Census returns are reliable, somewhat more rapid than here. Our wealth divided. by population is 2207, theirs 2247. In 1890 their aggregate wealth was 213,000,000,000, for 1905 it was 221,200,000,000. There is some food for reflection in the figures that a nation so wealthy as ours, did it realise its entire assets, could still only pension its people to the extent of fourpence a day, and that it requires more than six times' this sum to keep our paupers in our workhouses.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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