The capital supply and national well-being

Discovery and computation of new data as to the value and volume of manufactures, horsepower and capital employed seem to reveal the precise mechanism by which the mondrous industrial advance of the United States in the last century and more has been achieved. The essential of this prodigious advance has been a corresponding supply of new capital, and this capital appears to have been derived almost wholly and directly from the industries themselves, from high profits, and not from imaginary "national savings." It is this capital, invested in machinery and the development of new processes, which alone has made possible the increase in product per worker, and the resulting gain in real wages and in general well-being.