[217] "According to other statistics, the average annual earnings of a workman amount to $625, and one may safely presume that every able-bodied workman contributes every year 1/5 of his earnings to the increase of national wealth. Taking into consideration the period of time of a full working capacity of emigrants according to their age, and considering the much less working capacity of females, and the cost of raising the children which they bring with them, one may fairly presume that, during the last few years, not only considerable cash capital has been taken to the United States by emigrants, but that every one of them carries to that country, in his labor, a capital which may be estimated at $1200. The total value of the labor thus conveyed to the United States during the last five years, may therefore be estimated at about $700,000,000. No wonder that the United States of America prosper." _Hamburger Handelsblatt_, March 18, 1881, quoted in translation from this "leading trade journal of Germany", in _Annual Report of the Wisconsin Board of Immigration_, 1881, 14. [218] J. B. Webber, in _North American Review_, CLIV, 435 (1892). Another phase of the economic advantages of Scandinavian immigration has to do with the cash capital brought by the incoming thousands. While the first Norwegians were of the poorest class of the community, who escaped from unfavorable conditions almost empty-handed, squeezed out from the bottom of society, as it were through cracks and crevices, and while many of the later arrivals have had no other capital than strong hands and equally strong determination, the great proportion of adults have brought with them average sums variously estimated from $22 to $70 each. G. H. Schwab of New York, whose firm was general American agent for the North German Lloyd Steamship Company, estimated the average money or money equivalent brought by the Scandinavians, at $22 per head, probably including children in the calculation.[219] W. W. Thomas, Jr., Commissioner of Immigration for Maine, and later minister to Sweden, states that 900 Swedes who came to Maine in one year, besides clothing, tools, and household goods, had $40,000 in cash; and elsewhere he puts the average at $50 per head.[220] The figures from Wisconsin, which received better material than the average, would naturally run higher; in 1880 the official estimate of cash brought by each immigrant was "from $60 to $70."[221] Assuming an average of 50,000 Scandinavian immigrants per year for the last thirty years,--a safe minimum--and an average of $50 cash per capita, the annual addition to the cash capital of the country would be at least $2,500,000. [219] _Forum_, XIV, 810.