Chapter X
Our Basic Wealth
(C) Calculation of the basic wealth of the United States in terms of census-area.
The problem before us is to ascertain our basic potential wealth in terms of population and acreage. These findings will determine the true per capita wealth—not in fluctuating dollars but in calculable population-density.
The area of the United States was 1,903,215,360 acres in 1918: the population in that year was 104,180,000 and the basic per capita wealth was roughly, therefore, 18 acres, thus giving us our true starting point in whole numbers, namely, the potentiality of one person upon 18 acres in free intercourse with the 104.18 million (minus one) persons, who were, directly or indirectly, involved in 18 acres apiece under a régime of orderly self-government. This was our basic wealth.
We shall have to leave to the Conversion Committee the task of modifying this total by including the area and population of our outlying possessions, and estimating their present wealth in terms of dollars. If we are to avoid economic imperialism they must be included since there is no economic barrier between their effort and ours.[1]
- ↑ Except in the case of American Samoa, where we continue through altruism, stupidity, or pure forgetfulness to act as trustees, imposing a duty on American goods to protect the natives against our low standard of living, in spite of the fact that international fashions have quite changed and the bony legs of economic coercion are now boldly exposed beneath the scanty skirts of Mandate C , which, in modesty, was designed to cloak imperial operations such as those of New Zealand, in the adjoining islands taken over from Germany.
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