Show A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH When General ALGEII explained to the Grand Army of the Republic thatthe recent re-cent pension bills would increase the pension pen-sion expenditures to S150OCO000 annually ho said Let us bo fuse to our lawmakers I even if they have not given us all wo asked This naurally arouses the curiosity of most people to know how much the Grand Army of the Republic had asked Under the new law there have already been filed with the commissioner over three hundred thousand applications for pension and additional addi-tional ones are coming in at tho rate of 10000 a day If the applicant can show that he was honorably discharged that he served ninety days and that he is unable to earn support he will receive a pension It seems to us that tho soldiers should not complain at such a generous treatment as thisThe The vast sum that will hereafter be paid pensions to the old soldiers leads a Republican publican paper to congratulate the country upon the fact that this money will be spent among the people by the pensioners and will not bo diverted into foreign channels chan-nels It says But this money drawn from the people is returned again to the people in ever new and vital distribution This vast number of millions will be put II into and kept in circulation every year as I long as the law operates This is consoling To say that the taxes taken from the sixty millions and given to the old soldiers keeps money in circula tion and is therefore desirable on that account ac-count is a rather odd conception of a financial finan-cial benefit to the nation Suppose for the sake of illustration that a large part of the money collected in taxes from the people of this city were given to the policemen as extra salaries That would certainly keep the money in circulation circula-tion that is passing from the taxpayers to I the policemen and the policemen would certainly spend the money Would the city become richer by having the money spent Certainly not The wealth of the city depends de-pends upon what is saved If everybody should act upon the theory that it Is only necessary to spend money in order to increase in-crease wealth we should soon become bankrupt bank-rupt There would soon be no money saved with which to pay wages and the wage earners would suffer It is only because some men save money anduse in hiring laborers that industry goes on at all as it does at present If the money bad never been colleeted it would have been spent just as truly as it i will be by turning it over to the pensioners pension-ers The latter will spend it most probably proba-bly in supplying the immediate wants of their families The people from whom it was collected would have spent it and at least a portion of it would have been spent in such a way as to produce more wealth There is no danger that the money will not be spent The only question is how will it be spent andby whOm We have no objections to the old soldiers spending spend-ing their share of it but we do decidedly disagree with the philosophy which asserts that the nation will be more prosperous because be-cause it has a class of men whom it can induce in-duce to spend a portion of the taxes that have been co hooted If one member of a family should seize 1 and spend on himself all the money that came into the house and then tell the relit of the family that this made no differcuc S to them inasmuch as he was a member o f L the family and spent the money in the city in which they lived the case would be hardly more ridiculous than to maintain 1 that the people at large are enriched boY paying taxes in order that some one else may spend the money and thus keep it In circulation |