ABSTRACT
In the last chapter we examined such facts as were available respecting the accumulated wealth of the United States, of Canada, and of other important countries. In the present chapter, we have to deal with a different, though related, subject: namely, the annual production of wealth, and the distribution of the annual wealth product among the people of the country. The two subjects are related because, of course, accumulated national wealth, or national capital, is created by annual increments of produced and saved wealth. As with an individual, so with a nation, capital is the resultant of a net difference between production and consumption; that is, it is built up by income and depleted by expenditures.
