Sc. 8] WEALTH 17
Towa and Texas can be appraised within ten or fifteen per
cent, in the backward parts even an expert's valuation is
often proved wrong by more than fifty per cent. In some
cases, in fact, where a sale of the article is scarcely conceiv-
able, an appraisement is almost out of the question. To
estimate the value of the Yellowstone Park is impossible,
unless we allow ourselves a range of several hundred per
cent. Similar wide limits must be allowed when we try
to value free human beings. We can often give a lower
limit, but seldom an upper one. The estimates may vary
enormously with the point of view. It is sometimes said,
“If I could buy Mr. So-and-So at my valuation and sell
him at his, Id get rich.” It would be wrong, however, to
conclude, as some writers have, that because we cannot
value them accurately, public parks or freemen cannot be
called wealth. When the slaves in the South became free-
men they ceased to be appraised as wealth. The result
has been somewhat confusing to our census statistics.
The Manufacturers’ Record of Baltimore recently issued
figures showing a sharp drop in the assessed valuations of
wealth in the South after the war, and the inference was
drawn that wealth had immensely decreased. But a large
part of this so-called decrease consisted merely in the change
of ownership of slaves from their old masters to themselves,
and the consequent omission of them from the statistics.
Various writers, from Petty down to Engel and Nichol
son, have tried to assess the value of human beings.
Professor Nicholson estimates roughly that the English
nation is worth at least five times the value of other ex-
isting wealth in England.! Such calculations are of course
of more theoretical than practical moment. They are also
necessarily inaccurate, and involve in each case some par-
ticular supposition as to the purpose of the appraisement;
for instance, whether it is to indicate the earning power of
the population, their value to themselves, or to others.
1 Economic Journal, March, 1891, p. 95.
