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Show Count Your Change There's no argument in this editorial. edi-torial. It's merely a collection of facta, incontrovertible, eloquent facts that confound those who profess to see America slipping down into a state of effortless despair. ... Total bank savings today exceed ex-ceed $29,000,000,000, equal to more than $1,000 for every family in the land. Savings depositors number num-ber 52,000,000, nearly two per family. The number of Americans owning own-ing stock has increased almost 40 per cent since 1929. A group of 102 companies . had 5,539,036 stockholders at the end of the boom year had 7,675,143 stockholders at the beginning or this year. One company alone today has over 665,000 stockholders, a gain of more than 195,000 since the boom. This company has assets exceeding $3,200,000,000. Our total stock of gold is $4,-000,000,000. $4,-000,000,000. No other country ever possessed so much. Britain, for example, has only $588,000,000 Currency in circulation aggregates $5,464,000,000, or $700,000,000 more than In the boom. Last year $16,500,000,000 worth of new life Insurance was written. Total Insurance now carried is 1 estimated at $109,000,000,000, or : not far short of $1,000 for every man, woman and child In the 1 United States. Policies In force total to-tal 127,800,000. Such safeguard ... is enjoyed by the people of no other nation In the world. Our total national wealth, estimated esti-mated at $329,700,000,000, Is great er than that of a dozen Continental Continen-tal European countries combined. The income of the American people comfortably exceeds $1,000,-000,000 $1,000,-000,000 a week. The per capita income here is far greater than in any other land. There are still six or seven persons per-sons gainfully employed for every person idle. No fewer than 25,800,000 automobiles auto-mobiles are owned by Americans. This total is almost three times the number owned by all the rest of the world. Americans possess far more telephones tel-ephones (19,500,000) than all other oth-er countries. Radios . . . multiply . . over 16,545,000 . . unapproached by any other people. How many new domestic mechanical mech-anical refrigerators have been bought, would you guess? A grand total of fully 3,750,000, at an estimated es-timated expenditure approaching $2,000,000,000. In no other part of the globe do half as many homes enjoy such a luxury Americans are rapidly coming to regard it as a necessity. A recent survey of 29 typical small towns revealed that 71 per cent of the inhabitants owned homes, that 88 per cent had electric elec-tric light, 72 per cent had baths, 51 per cent had electric washers, 55 per cent had radios, 41 per cent had vacuum cleaners. There are more families in America Am-erica than in any other land that can afford to and do send their children to high school and college. col-lege. In no other land do so many average families have the means to enjoy foreign travel. The movie still attracts a weekly week-ly average attendance of 75,000,-000 75,000,-000 The percentage of our agricultural agricul-tural population who, despite deflation, de-flation, are acquiring domestic comforts, conveniences, labor-saving devices, improved machinery, the use of better roads, is constantly con-stantly increasing. Today more than 700,000 farms are electrified, representing an increase in-crease of 400 per cent in eight years, and the total Is being swelled swell-ed rapidly. In industrial communities hard manual toil is being steadily abolished ab-olished by the introduction of machinery. Each American worker now has at his command Ave horsepower, a record not even remotely re-motely approached outside our boundaries. The average wcrking-day a generation gen-eration ago was ten to twelve hours. The standard in this generation gen-eration is eight hours. The work week used to consist of six days. Now it is five and one-half days, with the five-day week coming into vegue. Never in the past was America so well equipped as it is today to resume an epochal forward march. Not only have wc changed from a debtor nation to the greatest creditor cre-ditor nation on earth, not only have we vaster national wealth, not only have we an unprecedented unprecedent-ed supply of gold, but we are richer in experience, richer in inventive in-ventive brains, richer in scientific knowledge, richer in machinery, richer in productive facilities, richer rich-er in managerial skill, richer in discovered mineral and oil resources, resourc-es, richer in transportation facilities: facil-ities: richer in every material wealth-creating product and process, pro-cess, richer in craftsmanship, richer in everything. The country is all right. What we need is less hysteria and more confidence and courage. COLLI- I ER'S, The National Weekly. |