I have personally made studies of the wealth of the United States, and I believe that outside of the census reports on this subject I am the first economist to undertake this work, anyhow with great detail and with critical analysis. My approach to the subject was wholly from the engineering standpoint. My presentation was not only a challenge of the accuracy of the census estimates for previous years, but also a representation that the national wealth can not be reasonably estimated by census methods, either past or present, or probably of the future. Dr. W. I. King subsequently made estimates on this subject which were published in the Journal of the American Statistical Association for September, 1922, and which differ from mine. This is a good illustration of how such a subject needs to be threshed out. It will be taken up by the National Bureau some day and eventually we shall have its quasi-judicial pronouncement.
In the meanwhile, however, we may assume that we now have at least an approximate idea of the national wealth, and a positive idea respecting the national income. These are naturally the fundamental things in any consideration of our national affairs. They are of the nature of a corporation balance sheet and income statement. The possession of knowledge of these subjects has already been of inestimable benefit, and in two main ways, as I shall proceed to point out.
In the first place, the possession of knowledge of the amount of the national income has given us a yard-stick with which to make many comparisons that previously were impossible. Now that we are able to make such comparisons we are getting many salutary shocks. For example, we are shocked to discover
