in the United States in Fifty Years. 161 



CHAPTER XX. 



VALUE OF THE ANNUAL PRODUCTS OF INDUSTRY. 



The census of 1840 has thus given us a mass of materials for es- 

 timating the annual income of the United States, which has been 

 rarely if ever, afforded to seventeen millions of people. Yet, witli 

 all this valuable aid, precise accuracy is still unattainable ; for 

 those diversities and fluctuations of price, from which no country is 

 exempt, are particularly great in this country. Articles of raw 

 produce, which vary in price, from year to year, far more than 

 manufactures, constitute here the unusually large proportion of more 

 than two-thirds of the whole annual product. In a country, more- 

 over, of such large extent as the United States, differing so widely 

 in soil, climate, density of numbers, and easy access to market, the 

 price of the same commodity varies considerably among the differ- 

 ent States in the same year. Nay, more — with the larger States, 

 the same local diversities apply to different parts of the same State, 

 and often make the price of the more bulky commodities, at one 

 place of production, more than twice as high as the price they bear 

 at another. To make, then, a fair average, it is necessary to take 

 into account the quantities produced in the several parts, as well as 

 the difference of price. There are also sources of revenue, in 

 which the census has not given the annual product, but the whok 

 value of the capital invested, as in the case of live stock, and of the 

 capitals employed in commerce ; in which items, there being room 

 for further difference of opinion, there is a further source of uncer 

 tainty. Even in those manufactures of which the census has de 

 termined their gross values, we may expect, in deducting the value 

 of the raw materials which have been estimated under other heads 

 somewhat of the same difference of opinion, and the same un 

 certainty. The most careful estimate practicable must there 

 fore rest, in part, on conjecture and probability. Yet, if th 

 estimate be cautiously made, and be founded on the opinion of jud 

 eious persons, who look not beyond their own experience and ob 



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