The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-02-06

lnooo aOout economy, 1Or economy, iiho
good name in man or woman, dear my lord,
is just now the immediate jewel of our souls;
but we trust the endeavor to secure it will not
deprive any considerable portion OF the peo-
pie of their reason. Its effect in some quar-
tiers has threatening aspect. Extravaganza
in every conceivable way brought financial
ruin upon us; but the worst points in the ex-
travagance were the reckless appropriations OF
public money by Congress, the corrupt and
abusive expenditures in railway, salary
and similar Jobs and when all these,
with the bad administration of the
national finances and the bad state
of our currency, brought on collapse
that suspended industry and commerce and
suddenly cut short the government revenue,
we were compelled to contemplate the unsatis-
factory possibility of deficit and either in
creased taxatisn or new additions to the debt.
economy was the proper thing to care for, and
they called for it DANGEROUSLY, and the conse
quence of all the noise is that Congress pro-
poses to cut down the army and the navy. 1t
proposes to reduce the army, particularly, by
five thousand men, and to retract, if necessary,
the limits of civilization. In final analysis
it is on civilization that we must economic.
Our too free indulgence in civilization is not
exactly the source OF our disasters, but re-
duced consumption of that article is what
must save us in the future. Our
frontier has been too extensive, and
20 into, Is Too Va
withdraw the forces by which the settlers
in the far West have been protected and the
Indians kept in restraint, and suffer the bar
barrie wave of Indian savages to sweep once
more over district in which the landscape
has already begun to be beautiful with the
the homes that have been made there must be
given to the flames, and the settlers must
come in or remain at their peril, for economy
requires that we should cut down the army,
and we shall not have troops to defend what
we hold Such is the shape that economy has
assumed in the Congressional mind. People
call for prevention of the frightful waste and
squandering Of the public money, and Con-
gress answers by proposition to discontinue
an outlay that is the only really profitable use
this nation makes of a dollar Of its money.
Upon the proposition to save at the expense
of the ''limits of civilization" enough money
to reimburse our losses by the Credit Mobilier
and Northern Pacific villanies, the army and
its proportions and its cost have come in for
free and, sometimes, admirable and judicious
discussion and observation in the House.
Comparison has been made between the cost
of the American and the English soldier, and
it is found that while each soldier of the
British army costs England about five hun
dred dollars o year, each soldier in the
United States army costs us for the same
period at least thousand dollars, which
will probably surprise nobody outside
of Congress. Apparently it seems to have
been supposed that soldiers ought not to cost
US any more than they cost England /; and
this superstition seems to have been based
upon the notion that there was some similarity
in the condition of the two countries and
in their military circumstances, while in
truth there is none. Not only are
soldiers fed and clothed more cheaply
in England than here but there is ct least an
equal difference in the expenditures of the
whole people in the two countries. In Eng
land labor is redundant and swarms of stall
wart young fellows find employment with
difficulty, and so drift into the army on very
small pay. Here labor is always in demand
and it requires at least tempting pay to get
men into the service. British money is on
gold basis also, and at least half the difference
nous imitation Of prices made by the fact that
our money is on no basis whatever. Another
part of the difference is due to the fact that the
British War Departments managed differently
from our War Department in all that impor-
tant part of the military expenditure that is
done by contract. 1t is worthy Of note also
that the declaration that each soldier costs US
a thousand dollars is deceptive way of
stating the problem altogether. Our expendi-
ture, with an army of thirty thousand
soldiers, is thirty million dollars, and that is
of course, thousand dollars q man; but
equally, of course, very small proportion of
this is spent on the men. Out of that ex-
penditure we keep up the whole military ma
chinery Of forts and military posts and
arsenals and armories; but if we doubled or
trebled the number of men in our army we
should not increase our expenditure on these
important points. Nay, if we doubled our
army we should not increase the number of
our officers, and our officers cost at present
just the sum that the men cost. If we in
creased our army, therefore, we should only
increase our expenditure by the moderate sum
due in the calculation to the pay and support
of the men we should add to it, and thus for
every thousand men added to our army the
ratio per man would be less for calculation in
the budget; and if we should ascend from
our little army of thirty thousand men to an
army like England's, of one hundred and
twenty-eight thousand, we should find that
the discrepancy in cost would be no greater