This is merely what eight years’ increase in army and navy has cost the
American people:
Average annual cost of army and navy for the eight years
preceding the Spanish War (1890–1898), $51,500,000.
Average annual cost of army and navy for the eight years since
the Spanish War (1902–1910), $185,400,000.
Average yearly increase in the latter period as compared with
the former, $134,000,000, making a total increase in eight years
of $1,072,000,000, or 360 per cent.
This eight-year increase exceeds the national debt by
$158,000,000.
It exceeds the entire budget of the United States for 1910.
It is twice as much as the highest estimate of carrying out the
deep water-ways projects.
It is nearly three times the estimated cost of replanting the
56,000,000 acres of denuded forest land in the United States.
It is three times the estimated cost of the Panama Canal,
including purchase price from the French company.
It is three times the cost of carrying out the whole irrigation
program contemplated within a generation.
It is probably enough to banish tuberculosis from the United
States within a reasonable time, if efficiently used to arouse
and assist the people in their fight against this dread disease.
More than 160,000 are dying yearly from this cause.
It is $60 for every family in the United States.
It lays a yearly tax of 1¼ per cent on the total wages paid in
the United States, on the supposition that wages average $600 to
the family; and we pay it in the higher price of our goods.
Interest on this sum at 4 per cent would give an income of
$1,000 a year forever to 42,880 families--a city of 200,000.
The increase for 190–09 is only $13,000,000 less than all the
gifts to charities, libraries, educational institutions, and
other public causes in 1909, which reached the vast total of
$185,000,000.
The cost of a battleship would build a macadam road of approved
construction between the cities of Chicago and New York.
The Congressional Library at Washington, the finest library
building in the world, was built for little over half the cost
of a battleship, and is maintained for three-fourths the cost of
keeping her afloat.
Fifty manual training-schools could be built and equipped with
necessary tools and appliances for the cost of a battleship,
teaching the rudiments of a trade to 75,000 young people each
year.
The cost of a few battleships wisely spent in the fight
against tuberculosis in New York City, coupled with proper
legislation and cooperation of the people, would probably render
this disease as rare in a generation or two as is smallpox
to-day.--By courtesy of the Peace Society.
(2024)
See ARMIES OF THE WORLD, NAVAL POWERS AND ARMAMENTS; NAVIES OF THE
WORLD; WAR AND RACIAL FERTILITY.
[Illustration: UNITED STATES S. S. NORTH DAKOTA]
Forty Y. M. C. A. buildings could be built and equipped
throughout for the cost of a battleship, each building
accommodating the young men in a city of 200,000 people.
One 26,000-ton battleship ($12,000,000) + 20 years’ upkeep at
$800,000 a year,--$28,000,000: Then the junk heap.
$28,000,000: 1,400 churches at $20,000 each, 7,000 farms at
$4,000 each, a college education for 14,000 men or women at $500
a year for four years.
For past wars and preparation for war, $423,000,000, or 70 per cent.
Left for other purposes, $181,000,000, or 30 per cent.
[Illustration: THE WAY OF MILITARISM
Which benefits a few trusts and contractors and gives temporary
and uneconomical employment, but which is rapidly impoverishing
the nations.