Santa Fe new Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1898-1951, 1898-05-13
The Regular Army Bug.a.boo.

Under the army reorganization Dill as
passed by congress recently, the size OF
the standing army has been increased
to 81, 900 men. Now, for II country the
size of the United States, that is neither
a tremendous nor dangerous number of
combatants to keep under arms in
time of peace, and yet the class of
papers in the cities which caters to the
preiudices of the ignorant and poses as
the friend of the ''down trodden labor
ing men" pretends to see in that slight
increase in the army a menace to Repub-
lican institutions. One of these So
called liberty bulwarks devotes consid-
cradle space to t%ommy-rot and lamenta-
tions over the terrible money power and
a larger standing army, and the follow
ing sentences are a fair sample OF the
arguments used by papers of that kind
in showing wherein the laboring people
will suffer from the new law:
1.-The social condition of affairs has
SltuuGu ltul II IL HCuIU VI IC iIolCy
power for it's possessions. Heretofore it
had reliance to some extent in the state
militia, but events have shown it that
in an emergency the militia could not
be induced to fire on the people who
stood up for their rights. The money
power instinctively knew that its only
hold lay in the regular army"
Therefore the standing army has been
increased to 81. 900 men.
The question naturally arises, if the
money power is such a terrible enemy
to the public veal, why the laborine
men. who are vastly in the majority, dc
not have congress pass a bill authoriz'
ing II regular force of 500, 900 men and
use it to protect the masses from the en-
croachments of this terrible bug-a-boC
of demagogues and idiots? The fact o
the matter is that when mobs gathel
and destroy property ''the people arr
} not standing up for their rights" ant
} property has some rights requiring pro
lection. The only time when the stat
militia has been called upon in thi
country to fire upon people, has beef
when a very small proportion of thu
people in some city has become lawless
destructive, and regardless of rights en-
titled to protection, and those occasion.
have been so rare that they can hardly
be remembered by even the persons who
participated in them.
That the United States needs a larger
regular army than has been maintained
in the past is too patent to require an.
under settlement has increased wonder
fully in the past 80 years, cities hav'
sprung up as if by magic, and condi
tions are changed in every way. Chang
ing conditions require corresponding
changes in matters governed by thos'
conditions. About nine out of ten o
the cities that have been created sine
the close ofsthe civil war want militar
posts, and a larger regular force will e
a long ways toward satisfying that craV
ing for uniforms and band music. S
far as the expense is concerned, the tax
payers will not grumble so long as the
can attend guard mount and listen t
, the sunset gun.
;, The public panderers, disguised a
l newspapers, that are wasting so mucl
, ink over that which amuses and graft
fies the vicious elements of the popula
ton, are the only part of the peopl
that is borrowing any trouble over
s standing force of 81, 900 men. The CON
parison between that number and tn
balance of a fighting population make
scare-talk ridiculous.