It exceeds the entire budget of the United States for 1910.
It is twice as much as the highest estimate of carrying out the deep water-ways projects.
It is nearly three times the estimated cost of replanting the 56,000,000 acres of denuded forest land in the United States.
It is three times the estimated cost of the Panama Canal, including purchase price from the French company.
It is three times the cost of carrying out the whole irrigation program contemplated within a generation.
It is probably enough to banish tuberculosis from the United States within a reasonable time, if efficiently used to arouse and assist the people in their fight against this dread disease. More than 160,000 are dying yearly from this cause.
It is $60 for every family in the United States.
It lays a yearly tax of 1¼ per cent on the total wages paid in the United States, on the supposition that wages average $600 to the family; and we pay it in the higher price of our goods.
Interest on this sum at 4 per cent would give an income of $1,000 a year forever to 42,880 families—a city of 200,000.
The increase for 190–09 is only $13,000,000 less than all the gifts to charities, libraries, educational institutions, and other public causes in 1909, which reached the vast total of $185,000,000.