Billion

“ It therefore belongs of right to the people. For what are its sources? In twenty-five years the wealth of the nation is reported to have grown from fourteen billion to forty-four billion. Why? What is the secret of this marvelous growth of wealth? ”

“ A billion and a half of taxes. Another billion and a half of railroad charges. And a billion of interest, not counting the interest on public and railroad debts. A total of four billion dollars. This is the sum the people of the United States must pay each year whether money be scarce or plentiful. Is it any wonder times get harder when money gets scarcer?... ”

“ A million men annually earning one thousand dollars each, makes one billion dollars in wages. This billion dollars going to 90 the merchant ten times a year and back to labor as often, makes an aggregate of ten billion dollars in trade every twelve months.
A SUMMARY OF ACHIEVEMENT Now, hold your breath. The figures showing the material result of fifty years of applied common sense, will stagger you. ”

“ You are the great financier, merger, and magnate. Do you mind a few statistics?
{Starkweather}
Go ahead.
{Knox}
You exercise a controlling interest in nine billion dollars' worth of railways; in two billion dollars' worth of industrial concerns; in one billion dollars' worth of life insurance groups; in one billion dollars' worth of banking groups; in two billion dollars' worth of trust companies. Mind you, I do not say you own all this, but that you exercise a controlling interest. That is all that is necessary. ”

“ Let us assume that of the present yearly product of the textile industry, which we have called three billion, one billion is applied to wages and the second to the purchase of raw materials, machines, etc., and the third to the profit of capital. ”

“ Or finally, to take the strongest case of all, one may, as a citizen, feel apprehension at times at the colossal fortune of a Carnegie or a Rockefeller. For it does seem passing strange that one human being should control as property the mass of coin, goods, houses, factories, land and mines, represented by a billion dollars ”

“ Next, my Remedy will benefit that great middle class whose savings go to make up the billions in the savings-banks, national banks, trust and insurance companies, which are used by the "System" to secure for themselves a hundred, a thousand, and ten thousand per cent. interest on their capital, while the owners of these billions must be content with two and a half to four per cent. per annum ”

“ When Americans talk about "a billion dollars" or a "billionaire" they think of a "billion" as one thousand millions. The word "billion" was originally used in France to denote a million of millions—or one million raised to the second power. ”

“ No, labor consumes all of the total product that its wages will buy back.
"Two billions are left to capital. After it has paid its expenses, does it consume the remainder? Does capital consume all of its two billions?" ”

“ The wealth of the United Kingdom is estimated at fifty billions, and all Europe two hundred billions, the United States seventy billions, and the whole world's wealth at five hundred billions.
Were the accretions of the bank at eight per cent. undisturbed and unconsumed, it would now take fifty worlds as rich as ours to pay that debt. It is sometimes wondered how there can be such an accumulation of wealth in one institution as to control the finances of the world. ”

“ We should feel dumbfounded if the new calculation were to be a matter of millions, but actually we are to imagine a magnification to the extent of billions. This sounds almost like a fable when expressed in words. But a million is related to a billion in about the same way as a fairly wide city street to the width of the Atlantic Ocean. Our Mont Blanc sinks to insignificance. In the above calculation it would have to be replaced by a mountain 50 million miles high. ”

“ It may be added that if the earth had contained a population of ten billions, each one making a million dollars a second, then to pay for that cent it would have required their combined earnings for 26,938,500,000,000,000,000,000 years. ”

“ During the past quarter century we have had a growth of commerce that has led us from terms of thousands of dollars to terms of millions, and from terms of millions to terms of many millions until we have learned to contemplate even such gigantic sums as billions. ”

“ Would you like to go back to the good old days, when the population of the Earth was twenty billion—about to become forty billion, then eighty billion, then one hundred and sixty billion? Do you know what a drupelet is, Mr. ”

“ That is, the millionaires, rich, and well-to-do, making altogether but nine per cent of the whole nation, owned forty-five billions of the total national valuation of sixty-two billions. The remaining ninety-one per cent of the whole nation, constituting the bulk of the people, were classed as the poor, and divided among themselves the remaining seventeen million dollars. ”

“ Money, of course; money unlimited; not money as we understand it, in hundreds and thousands, but money in millions, in tens of millions, in billions. And that is what these four men, with their resources and connections, were able to achieve. ”

“ It is billions of billions multiplied by billions of billions, and these multiplied again and again by billions of billions. The figures would stretch across the universe and hang over into space on both sides. ”

“ It is estimated (in 1909) , that back taxes on at least a billion dollars of assessable corporate capital stock, are due the city from a multitude of individuals and corporations.
[185] "The Present Distribution of Wealth in the United States":143.
[186] "Hundreds of millions of people." Not only are the 85,000,000 people of the United States compelled to render tribute, but the peoples of other countries all over the globe. ”

“ Always there were new discoveries of science. Always there were new inventions. Forces which a little while ago were beyond control, whose existence even was unsuspected, were harnessed to everyday uses. He saw progress in statistics. Things which were reckoned in millions began to be reckoned in hundreds of millions, began to be reckoned in billions. We loved to read the long figures where, in the pleasing extension of ciphers, wealth grew, debts grew—even debts were a source of pride before they called for income taxes to meet the annual payments upon them. ”

“ All the statistics, failures and errors of the past, with which the history of money abounds, being of no value, must be utterly ignored in any inquiry which proposes to predicate a natural and scientific 6money, as distinguished from arbitrary inventions, devised to meet the various exigencies of nations in their growth, prime and decay. And any person who proposes to teach finance, or a new system, by arraying before you the evidences of the past, contained in figures amounting to billions of dollars, simply proposes to try another experiment, to culminate in another failure. ”

“ I call those first-rate which are composed of treasures one possesses under one's hand, such as mines, lands, and funded property, in such states as France, Austria, and England, provided these treasures and property form a total of about a hundred millions; I call those second-rate fortunes investments in manufacturing enterprises, joint-stock companies, viceroyalties, and principalities, not drawing more than one million five hundred thousand francs, the whole forming a capital of about fifty millions ”

“ A thousand men contribute to the production of $1,000,000 of wealth, all of which is gobbled up in a few weeks or months by the scheming of a single “financier.” The board of directors of a railroad, a mining company or a manufacturing company, may issue to themselves certificates of watered stock for which [98] they pay not a cent, and which represent wealth having no existence, but which they are in a position to compel the public to make good. ”

“ In my reckoning, a man now ought to have a millionth of a railway, as we used to have an acre of unimproved land upon the banks of the Ohio. It is a hypothecation, which is an advance, as you see, since we gain at least ten, fifteen, twenty, or a hundred pounds of iron in exchange for our money. Well, within a week I am to deposit four millions for my share; these four millions, I promise you, will produce ten or twelve. ”

“ Eleven thousand two hundred millions; it will frighten none but a retail philanthropist. What is it but eight hundred millions for each of fourteen years? Now eight hundred millions—what is that, to average it, but one little dollar a head for the population of the planet? ”

“ And in all the infinity of great undertakings which engage the restless activities of our leaders of industry, capital is demanded, not in thousands, but in millions—not in millions, but in hundreds of millions. ”

“ Suppose the revenue of the solid property of the country to be worth also a million a year; and that if the fund itself could be sold, it might be worth twenty millions of the same specie. Suppose no such thing as credit or paper money to be known, and that every man who inclines to make any consumption, must be provided previously with a part of the circulating million, before he can satisfy his inclination. ”

“ The banker, the manufacturer, the railroad-man, the contractor, plans and carries through colossal undertakings so quietly that most persons do not know of their existence. Where there were scarce a hundred men in this country a generation ago worth a million dollars apiece; now there are probably fifteen thousand whose combined wealth will average more than that per man.
Scores of railroads are gradually absorbed into a few mighty systems. And more property is owned by a few hundred corporations than by all the people in the country outside of them. ”

“ The net revenue of the kingdom, the sum which actually passes into the public coffers, is somewhere between three hundred and sixty and four hundred millions, about one fourth of the whole of its currency. An estimate of the wealth of this nation is liable to less fallacy than of that of the other two, as it makes little use of paper credit, which may be artificially increased, and even supported, a long time beyond its natural bounds. ”

“ In round numbers, some forty thousand millions in capital have been absorbed in railroads alone. Add the amount absorbed in telegraphs, telephones, steamships, and electric plants, and a thousand and one appliances of civilization, and the total is beyond comprehension. ”

“ One million is a large number! "If you had a million shillings to count one by one, and did it as fast as you could for ten hours a day, it would take a fortnight; and the million shillings would weigh nearly five tons, or be a heavy load for a railway truck." ”

“ As the real wealth of the country depends upon the amount and value of its yearly produce—as from that annual creation, when measured by the monetary standard, and circulated through a thousand channels, all our incomes are derived—you, who supply the whole population with the necessaries and luxuries of life, (fabricated by others, but passing through your hands,) must necessarily have the best means of knowing whether the circumstances of that population have, on the aggregate, been bettered or made worse. ”

“ The addition of five millions to the metallic treasure of this country is quite sufficient to vivify every branch of industry, for it will probably put fifty millions, in bank-notes and private bills, into circulation. ”

“ Industry, commerce, shipping, and banking concentrated in the narrow area of less than 200,000 square miles, earned yearly returns equal as a rule to the total of the capital invested. Money changed hands rapidly, credits did the work of capital, and the rapid growth of population added large unearned increments to the fortunes of those who owned land or had established themselves in trade. ”

“ Every day I fixed my thoughts upon another million; and, as all who know anything about the million-mania will tell you, the act of fixing the thought upon a million, when one has earned the right to acquire millions, makes that million yours, makes all who stand between you and it aggressors to be clawed down and torn to pieces. ”

“ Respecting riches, the economist has to inquire, first, into the advisable modes of their collection; secondly, into the advisable modes of their administration.
Respecting the collection of national riches, he has to inquire, first, whether he is justified in calling the nation rich, if the quantity of wealth it possesses relatively to the wealth of other nations, be large; irrespectively of the manner of its distribution. Or does the mode of distribution in any wise affect the nature of the riches? ”

“ During all periods in which there has been a generous increase in the money-volume of a country or of the world, activity and prosperity have been its accompaniment. I challenge the citation of an instance to the contrary.
With a volume of money increasing at a rate sufficient to meet the demands of a growing population, and especially if the money be such as will not leave the country, but, under all circumstances, will remain in it, to sustain prices, preserve equities, and reward labor, no country with a proper coördination of its industries can be otherwise than prosperous. ”

“ The distribution of provisions, money, and merchandise in just proportions, according to times and places, is the true secret of finance and the source of wealth, provided those who administer it have foresight enough to suffer a present apparent loss, in order really to obtain immense profits in the future. ”

“ This large capital, which had so fructified as to produce more than twenty-five millions as interest, was an accumulation, penny by penny, shilling by shilling, and pound by pound, of the savings of that class of persons who, in every country, have the greatest difficulty in accumulating. Habitual efforts of self-denial, and a rigid determination to postpone temporary gratification to permanent good, could alone have enabled these accumulators to retain so much of what they had produced beyond the amount of what they consumed. ”