Putting on the Screws
Already they had subjected Boston to a levy of $50,000 a day for the maintenance of the troops. They laid on New York and the factory cities of New Jersey a joint levy of $100,000. They laid another impost for the same purpose on the big cities of New England of seventy-five thousand. This one levy alone amounted to 1 million, 575 thousand dollars a week; and it was only one of many.[161]
They confiscated outright all the cash, funds, realizable securities and notes belonging to the state, city and local governments. Every bank was warned under threat of condign punishment to deliver over everything that might be considered public property. In New York City they seized from a bank $100,000 that was deposited by a State Department to pay a draft; and they issued a warning that if the holder of the draft attempted to collect the amount or permitted it to pass from his possession, his house and lands would be confiscated.[162]
They declared themselves possessed as absolute owners by right of conquest of all public property besides cash. Thus in New York they asserted ownership of ninety-nine million dollars’ worth of suspension bridges and in Boston they took bridges to the value of ten and a quarter millions. They took the New York City armories valued at fifteen millions. They declared that they owned the subways valued at 100 millions.
All United States property, comprising fortifications everywhere in the conquered territory, navy yards, post offices, customs houses, lighthouses, treasury buildings, and court houses were listed in proclamations throughout the occupied country as good and legal prizes of war. The property so seized in the city of New York alone amounted to sixty-six millions.[163]
Working Furiously for Defense
The United States was working furiously for defense. In the steel country of Pennsylvania and the West, all the works were being altered to turn them into factories for shells, shrapnel, big guns and gun carriages. At Watervliet and Indian Head the capacity of the shops had been enlarged immensely and there was not a moment in the day or the night when there was a pause in the headlong labor. Powder was being made in the Middle West, in places safe from any possible attack by aeroplanes. The flying machine works of Hammondsport, and Buffalo, in New York, San Diego, and Overland Park, were turning out machines at the rate of one and sometimes two a month. Half a dozen other factories were being erected.[164]
A group of automobile factories had agreed to turn out 2-ton trucks at the rate of forty a day, and, indeed, already were producing thirty a day. One concern was working under a contract to produce enough automobiles every day to carry one regiment, each machine capable of making 100 miles an hour with four men and ten days’ rations of food and ammunition. Others had agreed between them to produce enough motors in every working day to carry five or six regiments.[165]