Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1861-04-26

How War VIII Affect the Countr


| From the New York World
1t is vast mistake to suppose that a
state of war is necessarily incompatible
with thrift and progress. What was the
experience of England in the mighty con-
tiict she wagea with little intermission
from 1892 to 1915? During the latter
years of that war, England had over a
million of men in military and naval pay.
Her expenditures before lis close had
reached the enormous amount of more
than one hundred million pounds sterling
annually-ezclusive of the large loans she
was obliged to furnish to her impoverished
allies on the continent. And vet she made
greater advances in population and in
wealth, during that same twenty-three
years, than during any previous period of
the same length in her entire history
Her population increased one fourth her
exports more than doubled, and her i'm
ports nearly doubled; her shipping in
creased from one million of tons to two
and half millions; her agricultural pro-
ducts .rebled in value, and her manufac-
lures, in spite of temporary reverses, pro-
gressed in ratio never before paralleled
her cotton manufactures alone increas-
ing from value of 92, $50, 600 in 1897
to 917,655, 900 in 1914. Her annual
revenues, received by taxation, increased
from nineteen millions of pound sterling in
1872 to seuGaty-taco millions in 1915. En-
gland, Notwithstanding vast burdens of
taxation. such as no nation had ever be-
fore borne, was immeasurably the richest
and most prosperous country in the world
at the close Of the war; and even in 1914,
before the great crisis, her government
was able to borrow money at better rate
than at the beginning Of the struggle,
more than twenty years before. She ac-
tually did borrow 935, 100000 at a trihe
over four and a half per cent. 1t is an
extraordinary fact that this remarkable
prosperity in all departments of British in
dustry continued up to the very close of
the war. and was Immediately afterWard
followed by one of the severest periods of
financial distress England has ever e1pe-
rienced. That distress was attributed to
several causes, which it is not necessary
to mention now; the truth remains the
same-that prosperity was the concomi-
tant of war, and adversely the first atten-
dant of peace. Now Who will not say,
even if worst comes to worst. that the free
States, with their twenty millions, are not
in as good a condition to maintain strife
with the entire South, possessing not one
third of that number of white msn, as was
Great Britain, with its twelve or fifteen
millions, to fight twice that number of
Frenchmen And who will think of com
pairing the scale of operations which it
would be necessary for Us to undertake,
with that required to meet and battle such
an antagonist as Napoleon?
There is no good reason why northern
commerce should be injured in the least by
the impending conflict The rebel states
have no navy to threaten it. They can
not engage in rrivateering, because the is
sue Of letters Of nlarque, that can be re-
spected is national privilege only; and
there is no likelihood that these states will
get admittance into the family of nations
Priyateering, unaccredited by national
sanction, is simply piracy, and would not
for day be tolerated. in fact northern
commerce would rather be the gamer by
the change in the order of things. Every
southern port Of any consequence would
be blockaded, and all direct trade with
Europe thereby stopped. The operation
Of this would be that all foreign goods for
southern consumption would come in By
the ports of the North Our own domes-
tic manufactures would be to some extent
injured BY the partial loss of southern Gus
tom. But the great bulk of our manu-
factured goods finds market elsewhere
than south of Mason and Dixon's, and,
withal, they are, to large extent, of such
character as virtually to be necessaries of
life, which the South could not dispense
with even if it would. Our agricultural
industry will be even less affected.