Such is the established mode of procedure to-day. If one is planning the expenditure of a very large amount of public money, let him point out how easily the money may be saved or earned by somebody else. If I have seemed to harp too much on the man with the cigar, it is because he is the classic type of the victim in the case. Just consider what a trifling favor one is asked for—merely to give up a nasty, unsanitary habit, and not only be happier oneself, but bring happiness to the big-navy man, the internal-waterways man, the Association for the Encouragement of Grand Opera among the Masses, the Society for the Pensioning of Decayed Journalists, the Society for Damming the Arctic Current on the Banks of Newfoundland, the Society for the Construction of Municipal Airships. These enthusiastic gentry find no habit too hard for the other man to break, no economy too difficult for the other man to adopt, and no remedy too complicated for the other man to put into effect. Smith is amazed that any one could refuse him $200,000,000 for the navy.
“Why, look at your birds and your insect-ridden crops!”
“You grudge me the money for a hundred-foot automobile highway from New York to San Francisco?” says Jones. “Why, consider your wasteful steam-engines, with their ridiculous loss of ninety-seven per cent. of the latent coal energy!”
“Double the efficiency of your steam-engines, and you have enough for a dozen automobile highways.”
You see, that is all that stands in the way, Harold, a mere trifle like doubling the efficiency of the steam-engine.
“I want $5,000,000 to build a monument twelve hundred feet high to Captain John Smith and Pocahontas,” says Robinson. “You can’t spare the money? Sir, take the revolving storm-doors in New York City alone, which now represent so much wasted human energy, and harness these doors to a series of storage batteries, and you will have your $5,000,000 back in the course of a year.”
Will some one kindly run out and electrify all the revolving doors in New York City?
I have a confession to make. My heart goes out to the shiftless American farmer. He is responsible for almost as many good causes dying of lack of nutrition as is the habitual smoker.
If the American farmer would plow deep instead of merely scratching the soil, we could blow Japan out of the water. If he would study the chemistry of soils, we could give free railroad rides to every man and woman in the United States between the ages of thirty and forty-five. If we would build decent roads, we could pay off the national debt.
In other words, if the American farmer could be persuaded to make his land produce, say, only ten times its present yield, the millennium would be here in a jump.