Читать книгу Readings in Money and Banking - Chester Arthur Phillips - Страница 44

It would be highly desirable to test our general conclusions by means of direct information regarding profits made in various branches of trade, but the data available for such a purpose are very meager. What scraps of information are available, however, support the view that profits were uncommonly large. Mr. David A. Wells, for example, in his reports as special commissioner of the revenue, has stories of "most anomalous and extraordinary" profits that were realized in the paper, woolen, pig-iron, and salt industries. A more general indication of the profitableness of business is afforded by the remark in the annual circular of Dun's Mercantile Agency for 1864, that "it is generally conceded that the average profits on trade range from 12 to 15 per cent."

But the most important piece of evidence is found in the statistics of failures compiled by the same agency. The following table shows Dun's report of the number of bankruptcies and the amount of liabilities in the loyal States from the panic year 1857 to the end of the war: