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.