OUR ARMAMENTS NOT A BURDEN
Life being a reaction between the individual and environing stimuli, it
naturally follows that those stimuli not destructive are necessarily
formative.
The health and development of nations are governed by the same law that
governs the health and development of individuals. When an individual is
subjected to a burden that does not break him, or to a trial that he is
able to master, he is strengthened, not weakened, by the burden or the
trial. Every individual is constantly being attacked by microbes of
disease. So long as he possesses sufficient powers of resistance to
repel invasion of disease, his ability to resist disease is
strengthened, and his immunity to further attacks is increased. It is
only when disease gets inside a man that it becomes a destroyer.
It is not a bad thing for a hen, but, on the contrary, it is a very good
thing for a hen to lay eggs and sit on them and hunger for three weeks
in order to hatch the chicks, and then to scratch for them and hunt for
them until they are able to take care of themselves. She is stronger,
healthier, more intelligent, more competent, and altogether a better
hen because of her exertion and her sacrifice. The rearing of her chicks
imposes no burden on the farmer, because she gets the wealth for their
growth out of the ground.
The human mother who bears and rears sons and daughters is supremely
rewarded for all the pain and the burden. The husband and wife who toil
for each other and their children are able to arrive thereby, and only
thereby, at most complete living and the goal of supreme happiness.
Happiness is our sense of the normal exercise of faculty; consequently
happiness is the feel of normal life; unhappiness the feel of abnormal
life.
Just as we are strengthened by bearing all burdens that are not so heavy
as to crush us beneath their weight, so the nation is enriched by the
burdens it bears and the expenditures it makes for the general welfare
of its people. We may help our understanding of this matter by
recognizing the truth that everything primarily comes out of the ground,
and that whatever comes out of the ground, whether from agriculture or
mining, is newly-created wealth. Whatever stimulates a more active
development of our natural resources produces accordingly a
proportionate amount of new wealth.
The people have been taught, until the belief is now well-nigh
universal, that the cost of establishing, equipping, maintaining, and
supporting a standing army, the cost of building, manning, and
supporting a large navy, and the expense of manufacturing and storing
large supplies of ammunition and other war-materials, represent just so
much dead loss to the taxpayers of the country.
It is necessary to correct this error, and to disseminate the truth that
the building of battleships, the manufacture of arms and ammunition, the
manufacture of supplies of food and clothing, require large numbers of
laborers and skilled artisans, who become a great market for food and
supplies of every description for their convenience and comfort, thereby
giving employment to myriads of others, back to the farmer; while the
money paid for wages and produce is kept constantly in circulation.
It is the difficulty of paying taxes from the pockets of poverty that
makes taxes burdensome, and not their size. If the ability to pay a
given amount in tax be tripled, the tax itself may be doubled, and the
taxpayers still be the gainers.
Wealth is what labor gets out of the ground; and whatever stimulates
labor, or creates a demand for labor, is a direct stimulus to
prosperity, by increasing both the number of laborers and the hours of
labor, and by affording a market for the products of labor.
If all of those thrown out of positions in a panic were to be put to
work by the government in the production of war-materials, there would
result no hard times, and the entire country would be better off.
The large standing army indispensable to Germany costs vast sums
annually, but the standard of personal efficiency is raised so much by
military training, and industry is so stimulated to meet government
requirements, that the Germans have captured markets all over the world
for the sale of their manufactured products in ever-increasing
quantities.
According to statistics, we Americans spend every year on sensuous
indulgence, on our hilarities--joy food, joy drink, joy dope, and
night-outings--nine thousand million dollars, which, in gold, would
weigh more than thirteen thousand tons--the weight of a good-sized
battleship.
The biggest super-dreadnoughts cost $15,000,000 each, built in
pairs; built a hundred at a time, they certainly would not cost
over $12,000,000 each. We could build, for what we spend on
sensuous indulgence, 750 super-dreadnoughts; we could build 160
super-dreadnoughts a year for what we spend on alcoholic beverages; 83 a
year for what we spend on tobacco; three a year for what we spend on
chewing-gum.
The total amount that we spend each year on our Army and Navy is about
$250,000,000. Consequently, we spend more than twelve times as much on
alcoholic drinks and tobacco as we do on our Army and Navy.
I do not mean to preach a temperance sermon, or to advise against the
use of tobacco. Nevertheless, I do think that for every dollar we spend
on indulgence, we might drop a couple of cents into the side-till just
for insurance--for the safety of our country against war, in order that
our joys of living may be continued.
The small burden of armaments in proportion to the burden of luxuries is
very well stated in the following quotation from "Some Economic Aspects
of War," by Professor C. Emery:--
* * * * *
"_Certainly Bloch is not likely to minimize the extent of such
expenditures, as he has been one of the leading writers to show the
immensity of this burden, and yet he himself states that the military
expenditures of different European countries vary from 2 per cent. to
3.8 per cent. of the total income. Even Germany, with her great
organization, takes less than 3 per cent. of the actual income for its
maintenance, both of army and navy; and when we think of the
expenditures for luxuries, many of them harmful in themselves, the
extent of military expenditures appears even less. In Germany, for
instance, three times as much is spent for intoxicating drinks as for
the support of military and naval establishments. One-third less
consumption of beer and liquor on the part of the German people would
take care of this part of the budget altogether._"
* * * * *
[Illustration: Some Annual United States Expenditures]
There is no branch of insurance so important as insurance against war.
There is no other thing insured, of which the loss is so vital as that
of one's country, and there is no kind of insurance where the cost of
security is so small in comparison with the value of the thing insured.
Mr. Stockton puts this very clearly in his book, "Peace Insurance":--
* * * * *
"_For insurance against loss by burglary, the nation expends $2,850,000
annually; for insurance against crime in the form of municipal, county,
and state police we expend $110,000,000 annually; making a total of
$112,850,000 expended for premiums on crime insurance alone.... A total
annual amount on fire and crime insurance combined is $594,186,104, or
about 350 million more than for all our military forces. Considering
these figures we may conclude that our military expenditures are by no
means greater than the probable loss by a war; that they are small
compared with the amounts spent for fire and crime insurance, and that
the insurance rate is low compared with that for other kinds of insurance
in effect in the business world._"
* * * * *
During periods of peace, there tends to be established an equilibrium of
supply and demand between our developed industries and our undeveloped
resources. Consequently, when war comes and stimulates enormously all
our developed industries--arts, sciences, and manufactures--a
correspondingly greater demand is placed upon our natural resources, and
their development is proportionately increased.
The result is that the nation as a whole is not impoverished in the
least by the burden of armaments, but is rather benefited by their
support. Also, a nation may likewise be economically benefited by actual
war, so long as it has such resources, number of population, industrial
arts and sciences, and naval and military equipment as to prevent
subjugation and the humiliation and degradation of being forced to pay
ransom or tribute in the shape of a large war indemnity to a foreign
Power.
The fact that a war indemnity takes gold out of the country, and gives
it to another people, makes the indemnity a national calamity. But when
money is spent within the country, as it is for armaments, the condition
is entirely different.
The following excerpt from "The Valor of Ignorance," by General Homer
Lea, admirably presents this:
* * * * *
"_Budgets are but the sums total of the symbols of wealth. Whether they
are great or small, the wealth of the nation varies not one potato. An
individual measures his wealth by coinage, but a nation only by that
which coinage represents._
"_As a man squanders his money, he becomes impoverished; but it is only
when the resources and means of producing that which money represents
are destroyed or diminished that the wealth of a nation is lessened. The
armament of a nation, instead of being indicative of its impoverishment,
is rather an indication of its capacity._"
* * * * *
It is a law of psychology that, when we are subjected to a supreme test,
we develop unrealized resources within ourselves; resources that never
would be developed, nor could be, except through such trial. By
consequence, it is evident that supreme trial is an indispensability to
the best development of either individuals or nations. However severe
may be the trial that results in the supreme development of the natural
resources of the nation, and of the dormant resources in its people, it
is essentially beneficial to the nation.
Herbert Spencer said that, just as it is impossible to get a
five-fingered hand into a three-fingered glove, with a separate finger
in each pocket, so it is impossible to get a complex thought into a mind
not sufficiently complex to receive it. It is doubtless impossible,
therefore, to prove to the pacifist mind that the money spent in
building warships cannot be counted as so much loss to the nation.
The money spent by the government in building fighting-ships could not
be esteemed so much money lost, even if the ships were useless. The
government taxes the people for the money to build the ships, and then
pays the money back to the people again for the ships. The people get
their money all back, and the government gets the ships. The people lose
nothing, and the government is the gainer to the value of the ships. It
may be argued that the labor of the people is lost, but what of it?
Labor is neither money nor wealth; it merely represents time. It does
not hurt the laborers to do the work; on the contrary, it does them
good. They pay but an infinitesimal part of the tax for building the
ships. Their occupation constitutes them a market for manufactured
articles and farm produce, which pays the manufacturers and the farmers
a profit far in excess of their part of the tax for the ships, since by
the increased demand they both get better prices and sell more goods.
The farmer exerts additional effort to supply the demand, for the
laborers who build the ships, and the manufacturers who supply their
wares, call upon the farmer for greater supplies of produce than they
could call for if the fighting-ships were not built. The farmer, always
glad to get more out of the ground when he can sell to advantage, is
stimulated to extra effort to get the greater profit, and he is made
richer for it. The manufacturer is made richer for it, and the laborer
is helped by higher wages and by more continuous occupation.
The result is that the fighting-ships have cost nothing. On the
contrary, their production has benefited all. Everybody is made better
and richer through the building of them.
It is especially significant and pertinent that the added employment of
labor in the construction of armaments adds greatly to the number of
taxpayers. Consequently, the burden of taxation is thereby borne by a
larger number of persons, with a corresponding lessening of the burden
on each individual. This is one of the reasons why poverty is not
increased by increased government expenditures in the employment of
labor.
The enjoyment of life being derived entirely from exercise of our
faculties, the more useful exercise we get within our strength, the
happier we are. The building of battleships, by putting us more to use,
serves the double purpose of getting more wealth out of the ground and
making us happier. It may be argued that this would not be true if our
economic institutions were not slack, and that, by perfecting these
institutions, every one would receive his due amount of normal stimulus,
and would be getting out of the ground his normal amount of wealth. This
is all very true, but our economic institutions are not yet perfected,
and the cost of building battleships comes out of the slack in our
institutions. The work merely helps take up some of the slack.
When we have looked upon our Navy, remembering what the pacifists have
told us about its enormous cost, we are strongly impressed with the
colossal expenditure, not realizing that the Navy has actually cost
nothing. Its production has been a source of profit and benefit to the
people.
That which determines the size of a burden is the ability to bear it.
Our burden of armaments, borne upon the united backs of a hundred
million people, with an aggregate wealth of more than a hundred and
thirty billion dollars, with an annual increase of wealth of over four
billion dollars, becomes insignificant compared with the ability to
support it. Size, like distance and time, has no meaning, except in a
relative sense, for space and time are limitless. As compared with
space, a mustard seed is exactly as large as the sun.
We hear much about the tremendous burden of the present conflict upon
the warring nations. The pacifists tell us that they are destined so to
exhaust themselves that, when the war is over, we need have no fear of
any one of them, or of a coalition of them, because they will have
neither men nor money with which to fight.
[Illustration: Enormous Resources of the Warring Nations]
The first six months of the war cost about six billion dollars. Now,
assuming that the first year of the war should cost even as much as
fifteen billion dollars, this would be only five per cent. of the wealth
of the warring Powers. But, it must be remembered, that the same thing
largely holds true in the case of war that holds true in the case of
armaments in time of peace. The cost comes out of the ground, for the
most part. In short, the wealth created by the added stimulus in great
measure compensates for the loss, especially when the money spent is
chiefly returned to the people themselves. The actual out-of-pocket loss
to the nations in the present war, taking into account its economic
advantages, even during the war, will probably not exceed two and a half
per cent., and I doubt if it will amount to that much.
The total number of killed and wounded in the European War during the
first six months is estimated at about two million. Most of those
wounded will suffer very little permanent injury.
The population of the warring nations is more than four hundred
millions, taking into account only such part of the vast Indian
population in proportion to the percentage of troops furnished by them
as compares with the percentage furnished from the United Kingdom to the
number of its inhabitants. Consequently, the total loss in killed and
wounded during the first six months of the war was less than a half of
one per cent. of the population, and as the number of killed does not
exceed ten per cent. of the total number of killed and wounded, the loss
during the first six months was about a tenth of half of one per cent.;
in other words, only about a twentieth of one per cent.
After the war has run for a year, the total loss in killed and wounded
will not exceed one per cent. of the inhabitants, and the total in
killed will not exceed a tenth of one per cent.
When the war is over, any one of the warring Powers, unless Germany is
exceedingly humbled, will be in better condition in every way to fight
us than it would have been before the war broke out.