THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1907. AMERICAN WEALTH.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8373, 6 March 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1907. AMERICAN WEALTH.

It was reported the other day that Mr John D. Rockefeller was distressed by the exaggerated statements in circulation concerning his fortune, and we are assured now that his wealth does not exceed £60,000,000 sterling, while his income has never been more than a paltry four millions sterling a year. Apparently the millionaires are all a little vexed by the suggestion that they are in comfortable circumstances and a good number of them have convinced the New York Treasury Department that the amounts of their taxable property in the State are quite modest. There has been a good deal of comment upon what are termed the "absurdly low valuations of the millionaires' estates." Thus Mr in New York is assessed at a mere million sterling, and Mr J. D. Rockefeller's at only half a milllion, while the total assessment of the Vanderbilts is £560,000. In the popular mind these amounts are ridiculously small, but then, as we have seen in the case of Mr Rockefeller, the popular estimates may be exaggerated. The New York correspondent of the London Standard, writing on American wealth generally, quotes some amazing figures compiled by Mr L. G. Powers, Chief Statistician of the United States Census Bureau. The estimated value of the wealth of the United States, exclusive of Alaska Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philipand in 1904 £21,400,000,000. "The latest estimates of European national wealth," he says, "those of Mulhall, are for 1896. In that year the wealth of Great Britain was estimated at £11,400,000,000, and of

Russia as £6,200,000,000. The total for the two was £17,600,000,000, which is practically identical wjth the estimates for the United States in 1900. All known facts tell of greater wealth accumulated in the United States since the years mentioned than in the countries named. Hence it is safe to assume that the wealth of the United States differs but little from that of Great Britain and Russia combined, and is slightly in excess." It seems that every time the sun makes its daily course it finds the American nation £2,000,000 richer when its last rays linger at the golden gates of California than when they lighted up the granite hills of Maine. In the four years, 1900 to 1904, the estimates of the census recorded an increase in the national wealth of £3,700,000,000, or as much as the estimated total national wealth of Italy and Portugal, of Spain, Sweden, Norway and Deni mark, or of ' Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece and the Danubian States.