XII THE DEPRESSION OF TRADE 199 



in preparing it and taken away from real production 

 which adds to the wealth of the community, it would be 

 found to constitute another army much larger than this 

 vast army of 3,500,000 men. For you must remember 

 that in one of our huge ironclads you do not merely have 

 the men engaged in its construction, but you must go 

 back to every ton of iron and coal used, to the men engaged 

 in extracting the ore from the earth and in making the 

 raw iron into its various forms, to the men engaged in 

 making the elaborate machinery connected with it — the 

 engines of war, and the wonderfully elaborate fittings so 

 complicated that one of these great vessels is almost like 

 a city — and if you follow all these back to their primary 

 beginnings in all parts of the world, you will find that 

 there must have been a large army of men employed in 

 the construction of a single iron-clad. Add to that the 

 wonderful machinery used in constructing our guns and 

 torpedoes, the munition, clothes, food, everything that 

 is used by these men ; and if we further consider that 

 armies waste perhaps more than they consume — taking 

 all this into consideration, you will find that it cannot be 

 less, but probably is much more, than another army of 

 3,500,000 men engaged in the service of the actual 

 army. So that we have a total of 7,000,000 men at 

 the present time entirely occupied in preparing for the 

 work of destruction. If, as is admitted, the great armies 

 of Europe have increased by 630,000 men, I think it 

 more than probable that the increase of these armies 

 which wait upon them have been proportionally much 

 greater, because the appliances they require — the weapons, 

 the ammunition, and the scientific paraphernalia of an 

 army in the field— are so immensely more elaborate than 

 they were forty or fifty years ago, so that it will be 

 necessary to add near a million of men employed in this 

 work, and we shall have an increase of about a million and 

 a half of men whose labour is utterly wasted, besides those 

 actually engaged in the destructive, wicked, and useless 

 purposes of war. 



We have a very striking indication, and to some extent 

 a measure, of this enormous waste of human labour, in the 



