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country and which were on hand at the time of the taking of the Census. This alone would amount to a colossal sum in the aggregate. Indeed, it needs no long argument to show that the count was wrong. It must be very evident that if the count was right, the late war could never have continued as long as it did. It would have stopped from mere exhaustion of means to carry it on. If the Census of 1860 is right, there was in the whole country at that period property valued at $16,159,616,068. From this should be deducted $2,000,000,000 for the value of the slaves, which was included in the aggregate, "holding them," as the National Almanac very properly observes, "for all the purposes of our inquiry as producers and consumers of wealth, and not as property, otherwise than the laborers of any other country are a part of their national wealth and resources." This leaves $14,159,616,068. Of this sum $9,350,000,000 represented the value of the real estate, and $4,809,616,068 that of the personal estate. If no allowance is made for foreign accessions or diminutions of capital, the whole waste occasioned by the war must have come out of this sum of $4,809,616,068, and its increase from 1860 to 1861, the year when the war broke out; because the real estate could neither directly nor indirectly contribute towards maintaining armies and fleets. This proposition, if we take into account the waste both North and South, and on the high seas, is manifestly absurd. The debt of the United States is at the present moment, say $3,000,000,000; of this sum, say that but $2,000,000,000 represents property absolutely destroyed, or capital put into unproductive shape, as into cannon, uniforms, harness, caissons, pontoons, fortifications, men-of-war, &c. Add an equal amount for towns burned, farms and railroads destroyed, vessels captured or sunk at sea, and other devastation committed on the property of the Northern States (and which is not included in the sum of the national debt of the United States), and we have $4,000,000,000. The Confederate debt at the close of the war stood somewhere about $3,000,000,000. Adding the large amounts due to soldiers and others, it was considerably more. Of this sum probably not over $1,000,000,000 represented actual value, and of this we shall not allow over $750,000,000 for military consumption and waste; though

it is hard to believe that the rebels kept up a four years' war for one third what the same cost the United States. This adds $750,000,000 to the $4,000,000,000 already enumerated. Now whatever the destruction amounted to which occurred in the Northern States, in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Western Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, &c., it is very plain that the destruction in the Southern States must have been much greater. From the James River to the passes of the Mississippi the Union armies swept like a whirlwind over the land, and in their track towns were left burning, and farms and railroads torn up. The retreating rebels, too, often laid waste their own homes, and desolation thus marked the path of both combatants. Hundreds, nay almost thousands of towns were utterly ruined, while vast stores of cotton and other property, such as bridges, steamboats, &c., were committed to the flames without mercy. To sum up all this destruction at $2,000,000,000 is very moderate indeed, and yet, for that matter, our argument is sufficiently strong if we leave it out of account altogether. Adding this, however, to the rest, and the grand total of actual destruction is seen to be, even when estimated very moderately, no less than $6,750,000,000.*

The correctness of the census figures would therefore seem to involve the problem of destroying property to the amount of $6,750,000,000, out of a capital of $4,809,616,068, and still retaining as much wealth as before!

The census is, therefore, clearly wrong; but though wrong as to the entire sum of wealth in the United States, it may still be of some value in determining approximately what the rate of growth was from 1850 to 1860. This follows from the fact that these two censuses were taken in a different and more complete manner than the previous ones, and contained both of them the same class of items, and made the same class of omissions.

*See an estimate of like character in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine for June, 1865, which brings it by a different course to about the same amount.

The following table is from the United States Census of 1860, page 195:

The true value of Real Estate and Personal Property according to the Seventh Cen sus (1850) and the Eighth Census, (1860,) respectively; also the increase, and increase per cent.

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If this table were correct, the rate of interest, provided no movements of capital in and out of the various States occurred, was eleven per cent. in Connecticut, while it was but three and a half in the adjoining State of Massachusetts; and eighteen in Illinois, while it was but ten in the adjoining State of Indiana. The following table exhibits the various States in groups, and the respective rates of yearly accumulation from 1850 to 1860, according to the census:

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These discrepancies all prove one thing: that during these ten years of peace, movements of capital were constantly gravitating toward the least settled and least secure States, from the most settled and the most secure. This capital was sent for investment in order to reap the benefit of the high rates of interest prevailing at its various points of destination West and South. That capital constantly flowed in that direction in times of peace is evidenced from the fact that, while Western and Southern merchants were in debt to Northern and Eastern merchants, the latter were never known to be in debt to the former. So much for the flow of capital in times of peace.

Now for the reflux in times of war and insecurity. Without going into a minute argument to prove a fact well known to everybody, it will be sufficient to say that the abnormal increase of deposits in the savings banks and banks of issue in the Northern and Eastern States after the war began, the heaping up of specie hoards, the course of the exchanges with Western and Southern cities, the shipments of gold to Europe,

indeed, all those familiar indications of a backward tide of wealth, avoiding investment and running panic-stricken toward peace and security, which appeared at that period, incontestably prove the existence of the reflux we wish to establish.

The flow of capital toward investment and its reflux toward peace and security are thus clearly seen to have occurred in this country to a marked degree, the first during the decade ending 1860, and the latter during the semi-decade ending 1865. This wealth, wherever it goes, being reckoned, as a matter of course, a part of the wealth of the country in which it is found,* helps to augment the natural rate of accretion demonstrated by the prevailing rate of interest; and a country thus grows richer or poorer accordingly as she is blessed with peace and good government, or war and insecurity. The census of the State of New York for 1865, now in course of being taken, will, if made in the same manner as the last one, undoubtedly demonstrate that the State has greatly increased in wealth during the war. The bogus statisticians whom we have already noticed will, of course, ascribe the increase to the war, and piling error upon error, will argue that, as New York increased in wealth by the war, so did the whole country! And all from using figures instead of brains. For, if the latter were but called into service, the movements of capital to and from security and investment could scarcely remain undiscerned.

We have one more hill to climb, before indulging in a glance at the new views which on every side surround the theory we have surmounted.

Emigration and capital flow in the same direction, and to a great extent they flow together.

The same causes which invite the investment of capital invite also the emigration of labor; and were all things equal, the movements of the two would be identical. But in the first place the movements of men do not obey new impulses so readily as the movements of capital; and in the next place artificial restrictions of law and custom are placed much more numerously around the former than around the latter.

"It must be borne in mind that the value of all taxable property was returned including that of foreigners as well as natives, while all was omitted belonging to the State or the United States."-Census of 1860, p. 80.

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