ing influences-the wealth and resources of condition. It may easily be seen that here the richest nation in the world. Millions was a loss which simply passes all under THE FIRST APPROPRIATION FOR THE WAR WITH SPAIN. were required in order that the instruments standing. cesses. THE COST OF WARS IN GENERAL. The cost of war is not merely to be reckoned by the loss of men and the expenditure of money. We must consider also the less apparent but greater loss which is represented by the destruction of capital. It is comparatively easy, when the strife is over and the accounts are rendered, to determine with some degree of accuracy the loss of life and the outlay of treasure. The English statistician Mulhall tells us that the wars of ninety years, down to 1880, involved an expenditure of $14,778,000,000, besides the loss of 4,470,000 lives. The cost of our Civil War is given at $3,589,000,000. This evidently does not include expenditures since the close of that war for property destroyed, nor the pension roll of thirty-three years-all the direct result of the war. The Treasury accounts for these items even so long ago as June 30, 1879, amounted to $2,500,000,000. No separate accounts of such expenditures have been kept since that date, except for pension payments, which alone aggregate, for that period, $1,800,000,000, making a grand known total of nearly $8,000,000,000 to the present year, while pension payments will not cease for many years to come. The Franco-German War, which began July 15, 1870, and ended February 26, 1871, and is destined to bear some analogy to the Spanish-American War, at least in the matter of duration, cost both nations, in round numbers, $1,537,814,000. In any war conducted for the purpose of mere conquest or revenge there is a cost which is beyond estimate. Influences are propagated which affect the state and individual and which must be reckoned as a part of the gain or expenditure. As an illustration, it is said that after the Hundred Years' War in France and the Thirty Years' War in Germany there was a very perceptible decline in the civilization of each of these countries, and that it required decades (some say several centuries in the case of the Hundred Years' War) for them to be restored to their former Concerning the inquiry as to the cost in dollars of our war with Spain, we may properly begin with the first appropriation looking to the national defense. It will be recalled that while active preparations were being made, both by the army and by the navy, so far as regular appropriations would permit, prior to March 9th nothing in the way of money especially intended for war purposes had been provided. The suggestion, however, of the Spanish government looking to the recall of Consul-General Lee from Havana was so menacing that President McKinley consulted with the leaders in both the Senate and the House, and Congress unanimously and without debate appropriated $50,000,000 at once for the national defense. All the world knows how prompt was the action of Congress and how well prepared was the Treasury, which, on that day, held as an available cash balance the sum of $224,541,637, of which $168,863,179 was in gold. Fifty millions more could have been as easily spared, and there was a question whether for the moral effect it would not have been better to have appropriated that amount. However, fifty millions set apart at one time for war preparation was sufficient to draw attention abroad to the fact that the United States was, so far as money resources were concerned, ready to enter into conflict. The money thus appropriated by Congress was to be expended under the direction of the President, and he was hampered by not a single restriction. The President proceeded to distribute to the several Executive Departments such portions of the appropriation as he deemed were required by the necessities of their services. The allotments thus made were as follows: Navy Department, $29,973,274.22; War Department, $19,811,647.95; Treasury Department, $55,000; and State Department, $53,860.89; a total of $49,893,783.06, leaving $106,216.94 unallotted. THE COST OF GETTING THE NAVY READY. All are familiar with the extraordinary energies which were set on foot by the money thus devoted to preparation for the national defense. Harbors long defense less were mined; work on coast defenses sum-another $500,000-expended in dewas rushed; supplies and equipments for the stroying Cervera's fleet, cost Spain more army were hastily ordered; the markets of than thirty times that sum, since the the world were drawn upon for these to the Spanish vessels were valued at $16,500,000. full extent, and for ammunition and guns; The collier" Merrimac," sunk by Lieutenant and the work of strengthening the navy was Hobson in the attempt to blockade Santiago pushed with remarkable vigor. The number Harbor, cost $342,000, a comfortable forof vessels in the navy was more than doubled, tune even in the United States, and yet of the list of new vessels including 27 converted small significance placed alongside the imyachts, 26 tugs, 8 colliers, 8 cruisers, and 9 portant motive and splendid daring of its torpedo boats, ferry boats, lighters, and crew. supply ships. 66 Each battleship and armored cruiser of This fleet was purchased at a total cost of the navy represents a very large outlay of $17,748,385. Many vessels were also leased money. The "Oregon" cost $3,791,777; for use as transports, ice boats, lighters, and the average cost of such vessels in and water barges. The auxiliary cruiser recent years has been three and a quarter Harvard," formerly the steamship "New million. Besides this, the vessels of our York," and the "Yale," formerly the new navy have earned premiums for exceed"Paris," each cost the Government $2,000 ing speed limits ranging from $414,600, by a day. They were appraised at $1,900,000 the "Minneapolis, to $36,857, by the each, and in case either had been lost the "Newark," and aggregating almost $3,Government would have been responsible for 250,000 for the whole twenty-four speed that amount. The "St. Louis" and the earners. "St. Paul' were hired to the Government at $2,500 a day each, and their appraised value was $3,175,000 each. The guns of the navy are expensive arms. The cost of a 13-inch gun is $63,000, and its mount, $18,500. An 8-inch gun costs $12,000, and its mount, $5,500. To fire one of the 13-inch armor-piercing shells costs $560, and the 8-inch shells, which have proved so effective in this war, are fired at a cost of $134 (sums materially less than imaginative war correspondents have put them). These expensive charges have been fired many times since the war began, and no doubt the ammunition supplies have been heavily drawn upon, to be immediately replenished. Some idea of the cost of ammunition may be had from a statement of the Secretary of the Navy. THE COST OF SUPPLYING AND MOVING A BATTLESHIP. "The cost of materials for a complete supply of ammunition," says Secretary Long, "to once refill all the vessels of the navy, including the five unfinished battleships, would be $6,521,985; not including them, $1,836,482 less." The cost of ammunition for one battleship of the "Kearsarge" class is $383,197. Admiral Dewey probably carried into Manila Harbor powder, shot, and shell to the value of $1,000,000. Each of the five times his squadron passed the firing arc before the doomed Spanish fleet, it expended a round $100,000 for overthrowing the cruelties of Spanish rule. An equal An illustration of what it costs to move war vessels may be found in the expense of the trial trips. The average cost to the Government for each such trip is about $25,000. Therefore, to move a whole fleet hundreds of miles, repeating the experience at frequent intervals, soon runs into large figures. To illustrate: Admiral Dewey's coal bill alone for the month of April last was $81,872.91. It was, however, with this coal that he steamed from Hong Kong to Manila, and there won his memorable victory. HOW THE MONEY WAS RAISED. The expense of carrying on a war necessitates either the raising of funds by borrowing or by increased taxation. The excuse for a loan, instead of at once raising the whole amount required by taxation, is found in the fact that it is inconvenient and often impossible to raise by taxation the amount needed within the time required. The experience of the United States at the present moment demonstrates such a condition. Congress has taken the middle ground on this question by giving authority for raising a portion of the amount required by a loan, and at the same time by levying additional taxes. The act to provide ways and means to meet war expenditures, approved June 13th, in addition to the increased taxation provided, carries with it the authority for an issue of bonds, and in pursuance of that authority, $200,000,000 of twenty-year threeper-cent. bonds have been issued. At the present time the money raised by this loan is in the national Treasury, and available, as declared by the act, only for the expenses of the war. If it should be the pleasure of the Government to redeem these bonds, in accordance with their terms, at the expiration of ten years, the interest to be paid thereon will have amounted to $60,000,000; or, if it should be more convenient to permit them to run for the full period, the interest paid will have amounted to $120,000,000. Either of these amounts, as the case may be, must be taken as a part of the cost of the To this must be added the expense of floating the loan, which amounted to something less than $200,000, or one-tenth of one per cent. In passing, it may not be amiss to say that the bonds of the war loan of 1898 have been placed in the hands of the people without any intermediate expense for commission. It is the most successful loan the Government ever has floated. Expenses, including commissions paid during the refunding of the Civil War loans, when $1,395,000,000 of bonds were issued, amounted to one-half of one per cent., or $6,976,729. war. appropriations made in ordinary times with those which Congress has provided for the present emergency. Since 1890 the annual expenditure for the army and navy has averaged not quite $250,000 a day, while the present expenditure is five times that sum. A few examples will give a clearer appreciation of this increased expenditure. For the whole of the last fiscal year Congress appropriated for army subsistence $1,650,000; for only six months up to December 31, 1898, Congress has already appropriated more than $23,000,000 to cover the extraordinary expenses of the war. The corresponding items for transportation are: $2,400,000 and $89,000,000; for clothing, $1,050,000 and $36,000,000; for horses, $130,000 and $5,000,000. The most significant item relative to the cost of the war is the total of appropriations made by the Fifty-fifth Congress between March 9 and July 1, 1898, amounting in all to $361,788,095. This vast sum may be taken as the entire direct treasury cost of the war, since it is the opinion among high officials of the Government that no other appropriations will be necessary during the current year. $98,000,000 PAID OUT FOR ARMY AND NAVY. As a matter of fact, only $98,000,000 was paid out by the Treasury Department on account of the army and navy during the actual continuance of the war, from March until August 12th, when the protocol was signed. The following statement will show these expenditures in detail, and will give a graphic idea of the immensely greater expenditure for the army than for the navy, although in the present war the navy accomplished the greater results: There is still another source of war revenue. Many patriotic gifts have been made to the Government by individuals in aid of the present war. These have come from rich and poor alike, and are entered in a separate new Treasury account opened for this purpose. An old soldier of Indiana, who did not give his name, sent a twenty-dollar national bank note, to which was pinned a slip of paper reading: "An old soldier divides his pension with the Government to assist in the prosecution of the war." Miss Helen Gould of New York gave $100,000 in cash, and another wealthy resident of New York presented a vessel to the navy. A Polish Jew of Nebraska sent his check for $200, and in transmitting it he said that he was beyond military age, but that he was now a naturalized citizen of the United States, and he knew of no other way to show his appreciation of the boon of liberty than by asking the Government to accept his donation. President McKinley himself acknowledged August 12....... this gift. Greater still than the money value of these unsolicited gifts is the spirit they reveal of a love of country and of humanity which makes us all one people. COMPARISON OF PEACE AND WAR Perhaps a better idea may be obtained as to the cost of the war by contrasting the 1898. March... June This total of $98,000,000, however, does not by any means represent the expenses incurred for this period, for in the rush and hurry of warfare men have not had the time to present their accounts for settlement with the promptness required by the Department in times of peace. The accounting officers of the Treasury are of the opinion that not more than fifty per cent. of expenses actually incurred up to the end of the war have been brought to the attention of the Depart ment. WAR EXPENSES INCURRED BY THE STATES. It is presumed, then, that the actual Treasury outlay will not exceed $361,000,000. But this is only one of many expenses which may properly be charged to the war. For instance, an expense of more than $10,000,000 has been incurred by the States for the equipment and subsistence of their quotas, as presented to the Auditor of the Treasury for the War Department. These two sums-represented by the national appropriations and by the State accounts are the only expenditures accurately known at the present time, and it may be seen that they are materially less than the fanciful figures of the cost of the war given in many newspapers, which have ranged as high as $1,000,000,000, a sum obviously exaggerated. To these actual known expenses there must later be added amounts which now can only be estimated. There will be a pension roll; there will be claims for property taken and used by the army and the navy; there will be interest on the war loan; and who knows but that the administration of our new possessions may not add an item which may be considered as a war expense? Aside from the Government's expenditures, assistance has been rendered by individuals and associations, such as the Red Cross, but there is no means now of accounting for the amounts expended in the work of mercy. The Government actually paid out an average of $860,000 for each day of the SpanishAmerican War. To this must be added, however, an estimate of fifty per cent. of accounts not yet presented for settlement, which will bring the total up to approximately a million and a quarter a day. And this maximum of expense continued for several weeks after the close of the war, the subsistence of troops and their transportation remaining very much the same as if an actual state of hostility still existed. With these figures some very interesting comparisons can be made with other wars. COST IN COMPARISON WITH OTHER WARS. Accepting the statistics of Mulhall as to the National Treasury cost of our own Civil War, each day of that war cost the Federal Government an average of $2,476,760. It will thus be seen that, unless when all accounts are rendered a much different result from that anticipated appears, the daily cost of the Spanish-American War was only about fifty per cent. of that of the Civil War. It must be remembered, however, that there were millions of men in the field during the latter struggle, where only a quarter of a million. were engaged in the Spanish-American War, and if actual figures could be given of the cost of the late war based upon the number of men engaged, it would probably be found that the cost of fighting has not been reduced with the introduction of improved arms and ships. The Franco-Prussian War, of course, must be looked upon as one of the most expensive in the history of the world. Mulhall gives the total cost to both sides as £316,000,000, or $1,537,814,000. Lasting a period of 222 days, the average daily cost to both sides was, therefore, $6,927,090. The total number of men engaged was 1,713,000, of whom 1,300,000 were Germans, and an estimate as to the cost of maintaining the German and French armies would indicate that the average daily cost to the successful Germans was about $4,000,000, or very much larger in proportion than the cost of either our Civil War or the recent war. Fortunately, the character of the present war is such that we shall escape the more serious cost which in most instances follows war. We have been the invaders, and have ourselves been safe from any invasion by the enemy. This fact alone saves the United States from loss which cannot be measured by money. Neither will our stock of raw materials be drawn upon to any great extent, nor will our fixed capital, tools, and instruments be destroyed. More than this, there has been no noticeable interruption in the expansion of industry up to this time, and the return of peace finds the country in as good condition as it was when the war began. Another picture will serve to show the difference between our fortunate condition. and one in which the devastation of war has wrought almost complete ruin. The island of Cuba is acknowledged to be one of the most fertile in the world. In many portions it is possible to raise four crops a year, and the strength of the soil is such that it seems practically inexhaustible. From the evidence furnished by the reports of United States consuls which were submitted to Congress by the President in his recent mes sage on the relations of the United States and, in any event, there is a prospect that the United States will be reimbursed indirectly, if not directly, for whatever expenses it has incurred in the present war. and Spain, it is apparent that little else than the soil remains; that the supplies of the ordinary articles of consumption were long since exhausted; that one element of pro- "What will be the gain?" may be asked. duction has been almost completely anni- Certainly the United States has gained in hilated-labor; that thousands of the inhab- prestige as a naval and military power. itants have starved; and that large propor- The whole world has had a demonstration of tions of the dwellings, plantation buildings, what our squadrons and armies are capable and machinery have been burned, and the of doing. We, therefore, make a gain in imlive stock driven away or killed. It is doubt- portance as a member of the family of naful, if Spain had succeeded in subduing the tions. If it should be decided to hold the insurgents, whether Cuba could have been Philippines and Porto Rico as permanent restored to even its anterior prosperity acquisitions, there will be a gain important within a generation, perhaps not in a cen- both from a strategical and commercial point tury; for the only source of rejuvenation of view. The Hawaiian Islands have been would have been from the outside, and it is annexed as an indirect result of the war, safe to say that capital, being proverbially and those should be counted as a gain. Who timid, would have sought places of greater can doubt that our financial prestige has security. Altogether, the restoration of been increased by the floating of a war loan peace on the island, without some assurance at home at three per cent., the lowest rate of a well-organized government, capable of safeguarding capital, would not have restored the destroyed industries within the lifetime of any who may read this article. On the advent of good government, however, the restoration would be speedy. The tendency in the United States at the present time to seek safe fields for the investment of capital would immediately cause the restoration of those forms of capital which are essential to productivity. From the surplus stocks of the United States would be sent provisions, materials, machinery, and, in fact, all those things which capital needs for its rehabilitation. REIMBURSEMENTS AND COMPENSATIONS. As against whatever may be our losses and expenditures, in the end there will be certain items of reimbursement which must be considered. It is now likely that Spain will not be called upon to pay a direct indemnity, though to have exacted this would have been in accordance with custom and precedent. At the close of the Franco-German War the French were required to pay an indemnity of $1,000,000,000, and to cede provinces and fortresses. The Chinese-Japanese War resulted in the payment of an indemnity by China to Japan of $168,000,000, and the cession of the island of Formosa. The Greeks, at the close of the recent war with Turkey, were called upon to pay an indemnity of $20,000,000, and the Turkish frontier has been extended. But possibly, if a Republic of Cuba is established, it may be called upon to pay a part of the debt incurred by the United States to secure its independence; at which any national loan in time of war has ever been negotiated? This loan was subscribed for seven times over, and here is an exhibition of financial strength which cannot fail to have its influence for good, along with the prestige gained by the navy and the army. A gain greater than all others combined is the prestige won by battling for a high moral aim for humanity and civilization. There are two other entries on the credit side of our nation's ledger, either one of which, it is not extravagant to say, will counterbalance the money cost of this war. We have been drawn closer to our English brothers than we have been at any time since the existence of the nation. We have had a revelation of what an Anglo-American alliance may some day mean in the world's history, and the value of that picture before the minds of the people of these two nations can hardly be measured by us in such figures as we use in speaking of the cost of the war. And more even than this new fellowship are the stronger bonds of union at home. When South and North marched forth to battle side by side; when Confederate leaders took command of enthusiastic Northern troops; when new pages of history were written, filled with deeds of valor performed by sons of the North and of the South standing shoulder to shoulder battling under the same flag, the Union was cemented stronger than it had ever been since the Declaration of Independence was first read; and who shall say the cost of the war has not been small, when measured against such gains? |