but with an adequate supply of the nitrogenous element to keep it in full working condition, even if the work of the rest suffers.

The masses must yield even to starvation in order that the classes in the armies and navies may be well nourished. When nations are listed in ratio to the proportion of necesary food which is wasted in passive war, the foregoing order is reversed.

The sequence is as follows, interpolating Austria which has a fair supply of food, yet is forced to waste it in great preparations for war.

because we keep our army usefully employed as a border police, and we waste but little more money on the navy than is necessary to keep up our communications by swift cruisers with our foreign ministers and consuls. Therefore our wages are highest, being derived from the most abundant product.

The supreme importance of the food problem has been foreseen in Germany more than in any other country. In the recent epoch-making speech of the German Chancellor, Caprivi, previously quoted, in support of the reciprocity treaty with Austria and Italy, he said:

"All that we import from outside nations we need; it consists mainly of indispensable articles of food and of raw products for our industries.”

... In the past years, when I was a soldier myself I formed the unshaken conviction that in any future war the question of feeding the army of the country would play a most important rôle.”

That which was so apparent to Chancellor Caprivi when he was a soldier, became the chief work of Count von Moltke

and the German Staff, and it was the German army sausage, compounded in the right proportions of nutrients in the smallest and lightest compass, that enabled the soldier to make a strong broth in his camp kettle wherever he encamped, and thus rendered possible the great concentration of troops at Sedan, and made the siege of Metz an assured victory.

That great army must still be sustained in full strength even though the supply of food for the working people of Germany has become so deficient that the water in which the meat sausage of one man has been boiled, possesses a commercial value and is sold to the next man who has no sausage to boil, but is nourished with black bread even in the rich city of Frankfort.

Within a few years the relation of the cost of food to earnings has begun to be examined by scientific methods. Enough is known to state the case in a general way. The proportionate cost of an inadequate supply of food in the families of working people upon the continent of Europe is from 55 to 70 per cent. of their meagre incomes; increasing in ratio as the income diminishes. In the eastern part of the United States the cost of a wasteful supply is about 50 per cent. of the average earnings of average mechanics and artisans. In the West it is much less and may even run below 40 per cent.

I have lately made a beginning in establishing the data of comparative nutrition.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE WASTE OF ARMIES.

THE reasons for the admission free of duty of the crude materials which are necessary in the processes of domestic industry have been fully treated and will not be again referred to in this series. The practical absurdity of attempting to give tariff protection to the farmers of this country has been dealt with. The separation has been made between those branches of the mechanic arts and manufactures which must in the nature of things be conducted within the limits of our own country and those of which a product of like kind might be imported. The nations which have applied modern machinery to production have been distinguished and set apart from those which have been classed as the non-machine-using nations. The reasons have been given why those nations who have applied modern science and invention to the greatest natural resources have attained a dominant position in manufactures and in commerce by supplying the people of other countries with goods made at a relatively low cost of production as compared to the conditions of the nations which they supply and yet at much higher rates of wages. Reasons have been given why the effectiveness of labor is proportionate to the supply of food; or even proportionate to the supply of that part of the food which yields nitrogen, which is the most costly and most neces

sary source of physical energy and of the power to maintain continuous work or labor.

Upon a final analysis of all these conditions, the actual competition among nations has been narrowed down to four groups of States: to wit, the United States, Great Britain, France including Belgium, and Germany including Holland.

Were it not for the assumed necessity of protecting the domestic industry and the home labor of this country. from the competition of the people of the three geographical divisions named in this list, one may rightly affirm that there never would have been any tariff question in the sense in which that term is commonly used in this country. The attempt to exclude wool and other crude products would never have been suggested and the present contest would never have happened. In a final treatment of the question we may therefore narrow it down to a consideration of the relative conditions of the countries named.

With respect to the three European sections compris ing three great States and two small ones it will be observed that Great Britain is called a free-trade country, using that term not in a scientific but in a practical way. The duties which Great Britain imposes upon imports are substantially limited to spirits, wines, tobacco, tea, coffee, and dried fruits. They are imposed wholly for revenue purposes, and in respect to spirits and fermented liquors are balanced by internal taxes on the same articles.

Holland was the typical free-trade country of Europe down to the period when under the domination of Napoleon a huge debt was imposed upon this small state which rendered recourse necessary to duties upon imports. Belgium imposes moderate duties for revenue only, with careful discrimination. Germany under Bismarck's rule

was subject to a high tariff, which, having failed to produce the expected results is now being rapidly modified. France is subject to very high duties upon imports with countries with which she has not negotiated commercial treaties; not, however, as high as our own. In all these states the crude materials which are necessary in the processes of their domestic industry are substantially free from duties and each possesses a considerable foreign commerce.

Discriminating among them it will be remarked that the exports from Great Britain consist mainly of useful fabrics; the products of iron, steel, wool, cotton, chemicals, and the like. The exports of Holland mainly consist in re-shipment of imports from her colonies of dairy products, and of fresh vegetables to Great Britain. The exports of France mainly consist of wines, silks, and finished goods which depend more upon fashion and style than they do upon utility for their market. The exports of Belgium consist either of very cheap goods, produced mainly by handicraft; or of very costly goods, like Brussels lace, which are wholly the product of the lowest priced hand labor, barely earning a wretched and miserable subsistence. The exports of Germany are various and have been greatly increased in recent years by the application of what is known as "the basic process" to the iron ores of Germany, which had previously been almost useless on account of the large percentage of phosphorus in them.

In dealing with the relations of these countries with each other it will be remarked that France and Germany have attempted to secure tariff protection against the imports from Great Britain and from this country; yet the rates of wages in Great Britain are very much higher than they are in France, practically double what they are