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Show JJ-Jjn3Lj s s n - Released by Western Newspaper Uoloo. BREAKING DOWN DEBT TO UNDERSTANDABLE FIGURES AINS WORTH, IOWA, was, and, I believe, still is, a country town of some COO people. It is the market and cultural center of an agricultural agricul-tural section. Its people are of the types found in thousands of similar American country towns. They are frugal and thrifty as ' individuals and collectively as a community. Anything that would add to their tax burden would receive careful consideration con-sideration before a decision to go ahead. Such a proposal as a bond issue of $100,000 for a new school house would be provocative of much discussion. Collectively the people of Ains-worth Ains-worth have a debt of $1,300,000 over their heads lhat they do not consider, consid-er, and in the creation of which they had but an imperceptible voice, The portion of the national debt of each of the C00 individuals, men, women and children, of Ainsworth is $1,625, a collective total of $1,300,000. On that they are paying each year $26,000 as interest. Just as the principal prin-cipal and interest on the school house bonds would be paid in taxes they, their children and grandchildren, grandchil-dren, will pay their part of the national na-tional debt, and pay each year that $26,000 interest. They pay it in taxes, both direct and indirect. A part of the price of everything they buy represents taxes paid indirectly. indirect-ly. That $1,300,000 is a bonded indebtedness in-debtedness of Ainsworth, and the Interest In-terest is an annual charge against the people of Ainsworth. The same simple principle can be applied to any and every town or city in the United States. It is only when we break down the staggering sum into individual, individ-ual, family or community portions por-tions that we even begin to realize real-ize what the national debt means. We cannot visualize sums that run into many billions as applying in any way to us as individuals, but they do to the extent, at the present time, of $1,625 for each man, womar and child in the nation. U. S. CAN FIGHT AS WELL AS PAY WE MADE WORLD WAR I our fight by declaring war on Germany, and the same is true of this conflict. con-flict. In World War I England, France and Italy felt, and said, that as we had not paid as . heavily in casualties as they had, it was up to America to pay in dollars. In this conflict we are paying both in casualties and in dollars. Four American armies are engaged in the fighting in France and Germany. With these four are associated one Canadian army, one English and one French. On the Italian front there is one American army and one composed com-posed of English, French, Polish, Italian, South African, Indian and Australian troops. It is an American Ameri-can army that has done most of the fighting in Burma, arid General MacArthur's forces in the South Pacific consist largely of American troops with a sprinkling of Australians. Aus-tralians. We have fully demonstrated demon-strated that we can fight as well as pay. POLITICAL PATRONAGE AND BESTOWING OF JOBS POLITICAL PATRONAGE Is the privilege of bestowing jobs. Just what effect these jobs may have on any election is anybody's guess. In the years before World War I the number of civilian employees of the federal government was well under un-der the half million point During that war the number increased to a bit over 900,000. By 1932 the total had dropped back to 587,000. In 1944 it had climbed again to a bit over 3,200,000. To the extent, whatever what-ever it may be, that patronage affects af-fects elections that number could have affected the result of the last election. That number of federal civilian job holders was practically one-third greater than the total of civilian employees of all the states, counties and cities of the nation, including in-cluding school teachers, police and firemen. You can do your own guessing. guess-ing. NATIONAL SERVICE ACT THE PRESIDENT and our military mili-tary and naval leaders said a national na-tional service act is needed to more quickly win the war and save American Amer-ican lives. The labor leaders said they did not want a service act. In congress, in which was vested the final say, many members preferred to follow the labor leaders. Such leaders represented more votes than did those whose job it is to win the war. What will the people say to those members at the next congressional congres-sional election? THE STARVING PEOPLE OF EUROPE are looking to America for food. The American farmer will not permit that call to go unanswered. un-answered. For the farmer the war will not end with the silencing of the guns. His war job will be far from complete. To feed the hungry is as important as is crushing the enemy.' THE LONGER THE WARS LAST the greater our pleasure at their ending, and the more emphatic our demands for a permanent peace. |