t
an average net annual value of only $100 each, or less than 33 cents a
day, it would make, in ten years, at the rate of 200,000 each year, the
following aggregate:
1st year, 200,000 = $20,000,000
2d " 400,000 " 40,000,000
3d " 600,000 " 60,000,000
4th " 800,000 " 80,000,000
5th " 1,000,000 " 100,000,000
6th " 1,200,000 " 120,000,000
7th " 1,400,000 " 140,000,000
8th " 1,600,000 " 160,000,000
9th " 1,800,000 " 180,000,000
10th " 2,000,000 " 200,000,000
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Total, $1,100,000,000
In this table, the labor of all immigrants each year is properly added
to those arriving the succeeding year, so as to make the aggregate, the
last year, two millions. This would make the value of the labor of these
two millions of immigrants, in ten years, $1,100,000,000, independent of
the annual accumulation of capital, and the labor of the children of the
immigrants after the first ten years, which, with their descendants,
would go on constantly increasing.
But, by the actual official returns (see page 14 of Census), the number
of alien immigrants to the United States, from December, 1850, to
December, 1860, was 2,598,216, or an annual average of 259,821, say
260,000. The effect, then, of this immigration, on the basis of the last
table, upon the increase of national wealth, was as follows:
1st year, 260,000 = $26,000,000
2d " 520,000 " 52,000,000
3d " 780,000 " 78,000,000
4th " 1,040,000 " 104,000,000
5th " 1,300,000 " 130,000,000
6th " 1,560,000 " 156,000,000
7th " 1,820,000 " 182,000,000
8th " 2,080,000 " 208,000,000
9th " 2,340,000 " 234,000,000
10th " 2,600,000 " 260,000,000
--------------
Total, $1,430,000,000
Thus the value of the labor of the immigrants from 1850 to 1860 was
fourteen hundred and thirty millions of dollars, making no allowance for
the accumulation of capital by annual reinvestment, nor for the natural
increase of population, amounting, by the census, in ten years, to about
24 per cent. This addition to our wealth by the labor of the children,
in the first ten years, would be small; but in the second, and each
succeeding decennium, when we count children and their descendants, it
would be large and constantly augmenting. But the c
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