APPROPRIATIONS AND RESULTS

It cannot be too often impressed upon the American people that the progress of the war depends on materials, not on money. We must not confuse loans and taxes, which are the means, with ships and shells and guns and airplanes, which are the ends for which money is raised and appropriated. The people have been generous in the financial support of the Government; since the declaration of war over ten billion dollars has been lent, or paid in the form of taxes, to the Government. Congress has appropriated unstintingly for every object calculated to assist in the prosecution of the war; nearly twenty billion dollars has been alloted to the various executive departments for their use during the current fiscal year. Yet in comparison with this unparalleled out-pouring of funds, the results have been small. Without in any way minimizing the magnitude of our war achievements, it is conservative to say that they have been incommensurate with the money available for their attainment.

Some of this inadequacy in results can be traced to the executive inefficiency which is inevitable in such a rapidly expanding business as the United States Government. The rest must be attributed to the people as a whole. The very lavishness with which the Government pays for its wants has been a brake on individual production. Large classes of labor and groups of manufacturers have become impressed with the notion that they are indispensable. High wages have made it appear to many workers that they are fulfilling a patriotic duty by merely being present on the job. High prices for ships, military equipment and munitions have convinced some manufacturers that their obligation is fulfilled by the mere fact that they are in the business. The incentive of competition for customers or employment being removed, producers of the manifold war requirements are spending too much energy in determining the size and distribution of their compensation, too little in making their product equal in value and amount to the enhanced price paid for it.

We shall not see the end of these dangerous deficiencies, which have lately been especially manifest in aircraft and shipbuilding, until our nation realizes that hard work, not money appropriations however vast or intricately distributed and applied, is the only force which can bring into existence the numberless physical products which the prosecution of the war requires.