Appropriations passed aggregated $36,298,000,000, making the total for this Congress more than $45,000,000,000, of which $19,412,000,000 was appropriated at the first (an extra) session, at which war was declared on Germany.
Legislation passed included bills authorizing billions of Liberty bonds; creation of the War Finance Corporation; government control of telegraphs, telephones and cables; executive reorganization of government agencies, and extensions of the espionage act and the army draft law by which men between eighteen and forty-five years of age were required to register.
Prohibition and woman suffrage furnished sharp controversies throughout the session. The war-time "dry" measure was completed, but after the woman suffrage constitutional amendment resolution had been adopted, January 10th, by the House, it was defeated in the Senate by two votes.
Every man, woman and child in the belligerent nations owed almost seven times as much money when peace came as he did at the beginning of the war.
Figures of the war's cost to the world compiled by the Federal Reserve Board were summarized in the statement that the approximate public debt per capita had increased from $60 before the war to almost $400 at the end of July, 1918. To this was added the cost since July, which is at the highest rate of the entire period.
The direct cost of the war was calculated by the board at somewhere between $170,000,000,000 and $180,000,000,000, not taking into account the authorization of the debt or the cost of indemnities.
Four-fifths of the huge burden fell upon the shoulders of the future, only Great Britain and America absorbing a considerable amount by taxation.
The total debt of the seven principal belligerents before the war did not exceed $25,000,000,000.
The board contrasted these figures with the total value of the gold and silver extracted from the earth since the beginning of the world, which, it said, hardly exceeded $30,000,000,000.
The belligerent nations, therefore, owed about six times the amount of all the gold and silver produced in all time.