Total output to date.—It
may seem strange to say that one of the most perplexing statistical
questions is to state the total gold and silver production of the
United States from the beginning of mining operations to the present.
The difficulty lies not so mucli in the dearth of material as in the
embarrassing abundance of statistics, actual and estimated, made by
different persons at different times; covering overlapping periods and
occasionally showing gaps; including and omitting the product of the
Southern States; sometimes including the partial output of the west
coast of North America beyond the limits of the United States ;
estimated on the basis of the calendar year or of the fiscal year:
revised, changed, and corrected, until the whole subject seems lost in
confusion. And yet there is sufficient reliable evidence upon which to
reconstruct an estimate believed to have a probable error not
exceeding 5 per cent.
First,
we have Prof. J. D. Whitney's study of the gold output of the Southern
States from 1804 to 1850, inclusive, showing the following results:
Professor Whitney's estimate of the gold production of the Southern States from 1804 to I860, inclusive, by periods of calendar years.
1804-'23........................................................ $47,000
1824-'30........................................................ 715,000
1831-'40........................................................ 6,695,000
1841-'50....................................................... 7,715,300
Total..................................,................. 15,172,300
Professor Whitney's estimate of the production, by States, during the same time.
Georgia........................................................ $6,048,900
North Carolina................................................. 6,842,900
South Carolina................................................. 818,100
Tennessee and Alabama........................................ 263,800
Virginia....................................................... 1,198,600
Total.................................................... 15,172,300
This
carries the history of production up to, and two and a half years later
than, the discovery of gold in California. In the subsequent summary a
deduction has been made from Professor Whitney's total, in order to
adjust these statistics to that most important date. From the
$7,715,300 estimated for the decade 1841 to 1850 one-quarter has been
subtracted; thus reducing the estimate for the total production of the
Southern States up to the turning point in the output of the United
States to $13,243,475. After the year 1850 the small production from
this region has been usually disregarded altogether, until quite
recently, when it again appears as an item in mining statistics. It is
highly probable that during this intermediate period the total
production of the country has been overestimated to an extent at least
equal to the amount produced in the South; and, indeed, where the
estimates for California during the time of its greatest output vary as
much as
