Now put the two propositions side by side and look at them.
An increase of 100,000 men in the Standing Army would mean in fifty years:
1. An expense of $5,000,000,000 for maintenance.
2. An economic waste of another $5,000,000,000, being the potential labor value of the 100,000 men who would be withdrawn from industry.
The Homecroft Reserve Establishment would provide a military force of 5,000,000 men instead of 100,000.
It would provide for the maintenance of this immense force during the fifty years without any ultimate cost to the government.
It would create and vest in the government in perpetual ownership property consisting of 5,000,000 acre Homecrofts worth $1000 apiece,—a total property value of $5,000,000,000 which would be acquired by the Government, and fully paid for from the Rental Revenues from the property during the fifty year period.
It would thereafter provide from those Rental Revenues an annual income to the government of six per cent on $5,000,000,000 amounting to $300,000,000 a year.
The potential labor value of the 100,000 men in each Homecroft Reserve Corps would be saved and transformed into an actual productive value of the $1000 which each would annually produce from his Homecroft. The productive labor value of each Corps of 100,000 Homecroft Reservists therefore would amount to $5,000,000 in fifty years. That is the same amount that would represent the economic waste during that same period, of the potential labor value of the additional force of 100,000 men which it is now proposed shall be added to the regular army.
The economic value of the productive labor of the entire Homecroft Reserve of 5,000,000 men in the fifty years would be fifty times $5,000,000,000.