Note 253-6 — Chapter III

We need only call to mind such facts as for instance that the United States wealth of coal is 22 times as great as that of Great Britain. (Rogers, The Coal Formation and a Description of the Coal Fields of North America and Great Britain, 1858.) In addition to this, only about 16 per cent. of the combustible material is really used in the way furnaces are now generally filled, only 10 per cent. in foundry furnaces, and from 14 to 15 per cent. in the transportation of passengers on railways. The Falls of Niagara afford a water-power equal to 2/3 of all the steam engines which existed, a short time since, in the whole world. (E. Hermann, Principien der Wirthschaft, 1873, p. 49, 153, 243.) But that single families, houses, branches of business, etc. may be over-peopled, and the impoverishing disproportion between numbers and the means of subsistence not be susceptible of immediate removal by the unaided power of the crowded circle, cannot be questioned.