The Dayton Forum

Some critics are going so far as to say that a sizable portion of the expenditures supposedly being made for national defense purposes are simply to carry out the original Spend-Lend Program of 1939, which was defeated in Congress at that time. Of course it is true the President has stated that expenditures other than those actually for national defense were to be reduced. But the wiser and older observers of the national scene are of the opinion that few reductions in expenditures can be expected.

National defense costs are mounting rapidly and the program for housing and training conscripts and volunteers in the arts of warfare is considerably behind schedule. The construction of Army camps and cantonments will cost much more than originally expected. Labor costs are higher than estimated and many material prices have been increased from around thirty or forty per cent to as high as one hundred per cent for some needed items.

Numerous charges have been made in Congress recently that, regardless of ability or need for work, men cannot obtain employment in cantonment construction unless they join a Union and pay Union officials rather high entrance fees. Last week testimony was submitted before a Congressional committee that an unemployed but qualified electrician—father of six children—was refused employment on construction work at a cantonment near Washington because he could not arrange to pay the three hundred dollar fee necessary to obtain membership in a Union.

As a result of the lack of housing facilities, and perhaps of other reasons, such as heavy volunteer enlistments, it is now being predicted by those in position to know that in all probability not over one-tenth of one per cent of those registered for and subject to, conscription will be in training camps by January 1st, 1941. Under such conditions it appears more plainly than ever that those who contended, when the Conscription Act was before Congress last September, there would be time to try out the volunteer system before the Army could make ready to receive and care for a huge number of conscripts, were right in their positions.

According to the last available statement from the U. S. Treasury, the United States government has $21,832,403,564.63 in gold on hand at the present time. Most of this gold, of course, is stored in the great vaults near Ft. Knox, Ky. At the same time the Treasury has $1,886,561,800.76 of silver, three-fourths of which is in bullion. The day the Treasury statement was made the government had taken in taxes (including Social Security taxes) and from all other sources, twenty million dollars and had paid out thirty-four million dollars. On the same day the gross public debt amounted to $44,286,190,641.50.

Incidentally, currency in circulation during November, 1940 totalled eight billion three hundred million dollars, breaking all records. As a comparison, in November, 1929, currency in circulation was four billion eight hundred and fifty million dollars.