Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 259, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1920 — MONEY MAD DEMOCRACY [ARTICLE]

MONEY MAD DEMOCRACY

THE STORY OF THE WASTE IS HERE TOLD IN . PARAGRAPHS. THE WILSON ADMINISTRAtion spent $1,051,500,000 to build aircraft for the war. When the war closed, it had at the front only 740 airplanes alf told, no American fighting planes and only 196 planes of American make. Total loss, sl,000,000,000: PRESIDENT WILSON TOOK over the railways as a war measure and gave them to Mr. McAdoo to run; result, $1,375,000,000 loss to be paid by the United States Treasury and $2,000,000,000 increase in passenger fares and freight rates to be paid by the public; total cost to the American people, $3,375,000,000. * - THIS DEMOCRATIC ADMlNlStration spent $3,500,000,000 in building ships. The Shipping board estimates that these ships are not worth more than $2,000,000,000. Of the total sum $495,000,000 was spent of wooden ships although all shipbuilders warned the government that these would be useless. These vessels are now part of the loss, estimated at $1,250,000,000. THE DEMOCRATIC SECREtaty of War had the training camps built on the cost-plus plan—that is, the contractor who built them was paid back the cost of the camp plus five to ten per cent as his profit. The more he spent in building the camp, the larger was his own pay for building it. So most of the contractors spent all they could. Result, the camps that should have been built for $720,000,000 cost $1,200,000,000; dead loss, $480,000,000.

MR. BAKER’S WAR DEPARTment tried to build some 20,000 pieces of artillery and provide them with ammunition. It produced nothing that got into action except a few thousand shells and fewer than a hundred guns. Whatever may be left over for the next war, the loss, as far as the late war is concerned, was virtually the whole $3,000,000,000.

THE ADMINISTRATION ESTABlished a new artillery camp, near Columbus, Ga., and, as part of the site, bought for $439,000 a plantation for which the owner had paid $32,000. It bought so much land for this site that a local delegation came to Washington to protest that there wasn’t enough taxable land left in the county to support the county government. After the war Secretary Baker told Congress he had stopped the work on the camp. When Congress adjourned, he started it again. When Congress met again, he said he started it by mistake. Congress then passed a Jaw ending thid camp. Cost of Mir. Baker’s repeated mistakes, $7,154,887.

THE ADMINISTRATION ORdered 41,100,152 pairs of shoes, and received 32,227,450 pairs of shoes for 3,315,837 soldiers. THE ADMINISTRATION PAID the Curtiss. Company 320,000,000 for 4,608 motors and 2,716 airplanes, and sold the same back to the company for. 32,270,000. Loss, 317,280,000. , SECRETARY BAKER’S DEpartment spent 390,000,000 in building and operating the Old Hickory powder plant at Nashville, Tenn., and got from it no powder that could be used in the war. The plant may-be salvaged for $10,000,000. Loss, $80,000,000. THE ADMINISTRATION SPENT $60,000,000 to btrild a powder plant at Nitro, W. Va., and had there portable •property valued at $lO,000,000. It sold the whole thing <or $8,551,000. It paid the Hercules Powder Company for operating the Nitro plant $11,293,737, ana got no powder it could use in the war. Total loss not known yet but somewhere between $60,000,000 and ' THE ADMINISTRATION SPENT $127,661,000 for port terminals at Boston, Brooklyn, Newark, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Charleston and New Orleans. Some of them were hot finished and none of them were used for anything except storage during the war. Loss, nobody knows yet; probably $80,000,000 to $90,000,000. THE ADMINISTRATION SPENT $17,116,000 in constructing a port terminal at Charleston, S. C. It was built in an isolated swamp ten miles up the Cooper River, where it was necessary to dredge to reach it. There never was a pound of produce, a man, or an> animal shipped either out of or into this plants to make phenol and acid reauired by them. This was to furnish picric acid for the French, who Ge SIT Cm lv TOT CXpiOSIVeS. IwUC OS । . । ■■■ — - । । II I I* — •

these plants produced a pound of anything'that was used in the war. The plants cost $35,000,000. The French were .to pay the whole bill, but the War department settled with France for $14,000,0t)0. American loss, as far as this war was concerned, $21,000,000. FOR 391,000 HORSES THE ADministration bought 945,000 saddles, or more than two saddles for every horse and mule in the service; 2,850,853 halters, or seven for each animal; 1,637,199 horse brushes, or four for each animal; 2,033,204 nosebags, or five for each animal; 1,148,364 horse covers or three for each animal; .8,781,516 horse shoes, or twenty-two for each anima); (195,000 branding irons or a branding iron for every two .animals. The administration also bought 712,510 sets of spur straps for the Ordnance officers, or thir-ty-six sets for each officer. THE ADMINISTRATION SPENT for poison gas $116,000,000. Not a pound of American gas was ever fired in an American shell,. and only about one hundred tons of American gas loaded in shells ever reached the field dumps. Loss, $116,000,000. THE ADMINISTRATION SPENT $116,194,974 on nitrate plants at Sheffield, Ala.; Muscle Shoals, Ala.; Toledo, Ohio, and Cincinnati, Ohio. These plants did not produce a pound of nitrate that could be used in the war. Loss, $116,194,974. AFTER THE WAR THE ADministration bought 70,000 new auto trucks and automobiles, had them delivered, and stored them in the open air to be spoiled 'by the weather. Moreover, it assigned 25,000 officers and men to watch the machines spoil. The” total cost of the automobiles was $175,000,000; the- cost of having 25,000 men watch them was nearly >IOO,OOO a day. Total loss, whatever was the expense of guarding the camps plus $175,000,000.

THE ADMINISTRATION SPENT $250,000,000 near Norfolk, Virginia,, the native state of President Wilson and Senator Glass, the gentleman who managed politics for the President in the san Francisco convention. After the war it spent $70,000,000 on a new training camp ear Norfolk. The site of the camp was a swamp, so some of the 'bottom of the sea was pumped up to fill in. Then the camp was found to be so salty that it wouldn’t grow grass; and • now the administration wants $680,000 to sod it. CONTRACTS WERE LET FOR gondola cars to be used in France. They were made in Indiana. Shipments went right on after the war. In the summer of 1919 they were still going on.

THE ADMINISTRATION SPENT a great sum for the production of tanks, and did not produce a single tank that reached the front before the armistice. To complete the tank program it needed 1,200 tanks, which were to cost $25,000 each. To build these the administration started an immense steel and concrete factory in France, which was to assemble and turn out 100. of these tanks a day, or the supply in twelve days. The British were to furnish the guns and armor and ship them to France for assembly, while -the administration was to furnish .the engines and running gear, and ship them to France for assembly. The British supplied their part, but we supplied nothing. The factory was unfinished at the armistice and never produced anything. Loss, the whole investment; amount still unknown, but away up in the millions.

_ IN THE NAVAL WORK AT Newport News, Va., common roustabouts were getting S2OO a week SIO,OOO a year, or'a third more on a scale fixed by the administration in Washington. This was over than a United States senator receives. The manager protested, but Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, decided that the wage must stand. Mr. Roosevelt, aS candidate for Vice President, now represents the administration on the Democratic ticket. THE ADMINISTRATION AT beeinning of the war seized German shi?s valued at $215,000,000 and tried to sell them after the war to an ' English controlled company for $27,000,000. It was stopped by court injunction and a resolution of Congress. Attempted loss, waste or graft, $188,000,000. THE ADMINISTRATION BUILT a great terminal and storage plant at Port Newark, New Jersey. General Goethals opposed the project but President Wilson favored it When the time came to use this plant in the fall, the administration found that it was ice bound in winter. This useless plant was built on Mr. Baker’s cost-plus phm. Cost to the American people, $10,009,000. . • . .. Louis Woodworth had his tonsils removed at the hospital today. Mrs. Charles Tobias returned to her home Thursday, Mrs. John Osborne left today and Mrs. Bert Campbell will leave thPhospital Saturday. Mrs. J. R. Phillips, who had been visiting friends, returned to her home at McCoysburg today, accompanied by her -granddaughter, Dorothy Wood.