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Show An eminent French publicist, M. de Foville. has recently published the r6-' suits of his. Inquiries into the.prop-ev sion of the' .wealth of France, ana iiis , conclusion that the rate of growth of money accumulation is beginning (to exhibit siptis of a decline has stirred tip comment throughout Europe. This conclusion con-clusion is intimated rather than direct-ly direct-ly stated. France has so long seemed to have an endless money reserve that if she is entering upon an era of stagnation, stag-nation, when the diminution of her resources will compel her to refuse to lend, there must be a corresponding readjustment re-adjustment of policies on the great European Eu-ropean exchanges." There is plainly a disposition in higher high-er financial circles to question the accuracy ac-curacy of M. de Foville deductions from the latest statistics ie has collected. col-lected. He may not maze sufficient allowance al-lowance for the ways that the. taxes on which he bases his argument are evaded as their weight increases. But the data relating to the part that he has collected are not criticised, and on this he relies largely, to demonstrate his thesis. the-sis. M. de Foville finds that, between 1825 and 1830 the. average' annual valne of the- properties subject to succession taxes was 1,843,000,000 francs. By 1850. the basis had risen to 2,605,000,000, and by.1870 to 4,729,000.000. It reached its highest point about 1805, 6,930,000,- vuv, sua since men nas. Deen declining, the annual average since 1900 having been in the neighborhood of 6,489,000,-000 6,489,000,-000 francs. French 1 statisticians are properly the persons to pass on the correctness cor-rectness of De Foville 's deductions, but meanwhile eomment is made that the apparent decrease in French wealth may be due to a change in the field of in-, vestment, and that really France has so much money that she is in a position similar to that of a capitalist who invests in-vests 'with an eye to concealment of his holdings from the tax collector. Another line- of eomment is- that the population of Franco is so nearly stagnant stag-nant that no inducement exists for the extension of borne industries, and her capitalists must look around to "turn" the money in their hands. French vital statistics certainly lend plausibility to this theory.. The population has for a long time remained between 38,000.000 and 39,000,000.. To clothe and feed and house a population that remains so nearly 'stationary . is . an operation almost al-most as easily calculable as the rationing ration-ing of a regiment in time of. peace. It ealls, perhaps,- for a variation of styles and. commodities, but not for a great expansion of capital. France, moreover, finds it difficult to expand her manufacturing manufac-turing industries, to extend her foreign markets .enough to overcome the. uniformity uni-formity of the domestic demand. She is a large importer of coal, and unlike Italy, . whose population also grows slowly, she is without remarkable water powers to which. she can harness electricity.' elec-tricity.' Italy's estimated population, 33,500,000, is but 5,000,000. larger than it was- twenty years ago, 'and if-she were entirely dependent on eoal her industries ' would' be in - a very bad -.way. The Italian rivers -feeling f tti ..a ' tha invmilfiA of their initial leap: from the Alps or the Ap-penines Ap-penines lend themselves readily to the application of electricity, and the use which Italy is making of this force is stimulating her industries and is attracting at-tracting European attention. '. Whether racial tendencies are responsible re-sponsible for the slow growth of the Latin countries is one of those questions ques-tions more readily to be debated thin decided, but the. fact that in France, Italy and Spain the same peculiarity is observed suggests much when" we. speculate specu-late as to . their industrial commercial future. Spain's population in 1900, 18,618,086, was but $.200,000" in excess of what it was in 1857. Italy is better situated than the -others. - as there is large emigration which offsets the drift to congestion and which .diffuses the demand de-mand for Italian products. If all the Italians who have 'settled in other lands in the last twenty years had remained at. home the "statistical position" of the country would have been improved, but at a prico the payment of, which might have taxed her real progress. The Teutonic nations, on . the , other hand, not only report marked increase of population, but . marked industrial advancement ad-vancement contemporaneous with emigration. emi-gration. It is Germany 's great industrial indus-trial and commercial expansion that is troubling the financial calculations of other European countries. Boston Trsnscript. |