Increase of Wealth

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 14, 1872

Increase of Wealth.

FROM the following statement published in the Monroe (Iowa) Record, the astounding fact appears that the wealth of the United States has nearly doubled within the last census decade.

“We talk a great deal about the rapidity of our country’s growth in wealth as in population, but there are really very few people who have any definite idea as to how rapidly this growth is going on. Perhaps the following figures, extracted from the report recently made by Gen. Walker, Superintendent of the Census, may aid us in giving definite shape to our conceptions on the subject. The actual value of all the real and personal property in the United States, in 1870, was $30,068,518,578. In 1860 it was $16,159,616,068, so that the property value has nearly doubled within the last census decade. The increase between 1850 and 1860 was about $9,000,000,000, while that between 1860 and 1870 was nearly $14,000,000,000. The wealth of New York is very much greater than that of any other State, the aggregate being $6,500,841,264, while Pennsylvania, the next highest, only reaches $3,803,340,112, or a little over half the value of New York’s property. The ratio of increase, too, is unusually large in New York, the property value in that State having advanced, within ten years, from $1,843,388,517 to the present figures, more than trebling itself, while Pennsylvania’s wealth is but a little more than double what it was in 1860.”