Daily Arizona silver belt., 1910-03-17
THE SISTERS WAR AND WANT

THE SISTERS WAR AND WANT Discussing the insanely stupid competition mong nations to see which can squander the most money on vast armaments, the Cleveland Plain Dealer notes that the secretary of the navy is planning a battleship with 34,000 tons displacement, with dozen 14inch guns, six ighting turrets, 11-inch steel for citadel and lrmor belt, with many torpedo tubes and dozens ,f small caibre guns for a torpedo defense bat cry, at cost of $1S,000,000 And the Cleve and newspaper adds:
 Great Britain is still building Dread
 naughts with feverish haste Germany
 is trying to equal the British navy. We
 are pouring hundreds of millions into
 the same losing game. Japan strains
 every effort to hold its place in naval
 rating. The great powers are putting
 billions of dollars into armaments
 meant to destroy each other, which are
 proitless burdens except in great
 crises, and which in few years become
 obsolete and have to be replaced with
 ships still more costly.
 Think of what $18,000,000 would do
 in the saving of lives by establishing
 tuberculosis sanitariums, in watering
 
 ing coal mines fit to work in or in pro-
 viding for the proper protection of our
 great national resources. Think of all
 the lives and property that might be
 saved, the sum might be added to the
 total of human happiness, if all our
 naval budgets could be turned into use
 ful and productive channels.
 Yes, thing of it! It's worth thinking about I hink what it would mean if the millions ot ,blebodied men who are withdrawn from pro luctive industries for the worse than useles: of war were returned to productive in lustries and their magnificent labor usefully ap olied Think what it would mean if the taxes wrung from the people to support army ~anC navy were devoted to the common good. This IS billion-dollar country now. and 75 per cen of it's annual billion of expense goes to the pur poses of war; while pitiful amounts are deal put grudgingly for the development of water ways and roads, for the conquest of disease, fo1 the protection of workers, for the safe guarding and cultivation of the remaining supply of tim per, for the conservation of the peoples herit age of natural wealth.
 While you are about it, too, you might con template the fact that besides the taxes that gt to the government, the American people ar' taxed $3,000,000,000 year by the protective tariff, all of which goes to build up the enormous fortunes which are the nation s greatest menace Think what it would mean if that $3, 3,000,000,00( ! year were applied to reducing the cost of liv ng, or to increasing the wages of workers SC hey could better grapple with that cost. Thinl what it would mean if the tremendous taxes i'm posed upon the people to pay dividends ol vatered stock were repealed, or if those taXe were devoted to the welfare of the people in stead of to the excessive profit of stock gam olers, buccaneers and thimberiggers of higl finance. You might think, too, what it would mean if the people, the real creators of wealth lad the benefit of the wealth they create, instead of having slender share of it doled back tt hem in wages that are wholly insufficient tC meet the needs of reasonably decent human liv ng
 There is plenty to think about in connection of the wastes due to wrong objective of gov and there is much need of thinking about them.