of their power even now, and their representatives who, in support of the pending bill, have appeared before committees of Congress and have approached individual Senators and Members have presented and pressed their arguments in a confident and aggressive manner. If this bill becomes a law, it will confirm them in their estimate of the political strength of their present organization, and will encourage them to use it in support of the many demands that they will surely make for further legislation by Congress in their behalf, and their power to back up their demands will increase pari passu with the great increase in their numerical strength that it is the evident purpose of this bill to bring about, and it will undoubtedly take place under it should it become a law.

The gift of prophecy is not needed to foretell the nature of the demands that will be made upon Congress for additional militia legislation if this bill is passed. First and foremost there will be insistent and persistent demands for more pay for officers and men, and every demand of this kind that is made will be followed sooner or later by others of the same kind, each being based upon the assertion, doubtless correct, that the constantly advancing standard of requirements of members of the Organized Militia compels officers and men to give more and more of their time to their military duties and less and less of it to their ordinary vocations. Then will come the demand, already voiced in some quarters, that the General Government shall assume the very great expense of furnishing and maintaining horses for Cavalry and Field Artillery, and shall relieve the States of other and greater burdens, notably those of providing and maintaining armories, target ranges, drill, encampment, and maneuver grounds, and other necessary facilities, all of which but few if any of the States are able or willing even now to furnish to the extent of meeting the urgent needs of the present relatively small militia force, and all of which they will surely be far less able and far more unwilling to furnish to the extent required by the greatly increased force to which the door is opened by the pending bill.

Our population of more than 90,000,000 people will easily permit the expansion of our militia to more than a million men. With the same ratio of expense per man that this bill and existing laws permit the annual cost to the taxpayers would be $116,000,000. An officer of the National Guard has been heard to say that in a few years the yearly cost for maintaining the militia will be $100,000,000, and after making that statement he added, "but what of it?"

As the militia increases in numerical strength, so also will increase its power to influence the policy and legislation of the various States as well as of the Nation. It may be confidently expected that after it has been found that the General Government can be induced to bear an additional share of the burden of supporting the militia the States will not only shape their policy and legislation with a view to inducing or compelling the United States to shoulder more and more of that burden, but will actively support their militiamen in concerted efforts to obtain for themselves, at the expense of the General Government, more and more benefits in the shape of pay, allowances, quarters, retired pay, and pensions, all gradually approaching and perhaps finally equaling those allowed to officers and enlisted men of the Regular Army.

H R-62-2-vol 5- -25

The principal reason, and undoubtedly the only real reason, why efforts to increase the effective strength of the Organized Militia beyond about 100,000 men have hitherto been unsuccessful is to be found in the fact that the States have been and still are unable or unwilling to bear the expense, especially for pay of officers and men, that must be incurred in order to make a material increase in the force possible and practicable. But the pending bill proposes that the United States shall pave the way for a great increase in the militia strength by expending millions of dollars annually for the pay of individual militiamen. Undoubtedly the enactment of the bill will have that effect. Knowing this, and knowing also that the bill places no limit upon the strength of the Organized Militia, but actually invites and encourages an unlimited expansion of it that would involve an enormous expense to the United States, it is idle for the advocates of the measure to say, as they do in effect say in the majority report on the bill, that Congress can control the strength of the militia by refusing to make appropriations for its pay and equipment beyond a certain limit. If the militia has sufficient influence to secure the passage of this bill, it will, when far stronger numerically and far more powerful politically, backed up as it will be by local interests and State support, have all the influence that may be necessary to compel Congress to make not only the appropriations that by the passage of this bill it will be morally bound to make, but almost any other appropriations that the militia as a body may set its heart upon. Beyond a doubt members of the Organized Militia, taken us a whole, are just as reasonable, intelligent, and patriotic as are the members of the Regular Army or of any other large body of our citizens, but all of these are human; and it is a universal human weakness for the average individual, especially when dealing with the Government, to regard his own interest or the interest of his class as paramount to that of all others. But the influence of the officers and men of the Regular Army upon legislation by Congress is altogether insignificant and most always remains so, no matter to what size the Army may be increased, because with but few exceptions those officers and men are not voters, have no local affiliations, take little or no interest in political affairs, and have virtually no political influence. The reverse of all this is true with regard to the officers and men of the Organized Militia. Their combined influence in a political way is very great even now, as shown by the success of their efforts at this inauspicious time to force consideration of the bill pending in their behalf; and this influence, if yielded to now, is bound to grow with the growth of the militia until it becomes too great to be resisted successfully and too formidable to be opposed with political safety to the opponents.

If once the burden of maintaining the Organized Militia is transferred wholly to the General Government, as sooner or later it certainly will be if the course of legislation marked out by the pending bill is entered upon, the natural and sure result will be the eventual conversion of the citizen soldier of the militia into a professional soldier, devoting his whole time and attention to military duties and supported by the General Government on an equal footing with his brother in the Regular Army. In other words, a second Regular Army will have been created, but it will be an army actively engaged in political life and wielding therein an influence so great as to be

irresistible when consolidated and exerted in the interest of that army or any of its members. Congress should take warning from the concerted pressure that the militia has been able to bring to bear upon it in support of the pending bill. The organization of the militia is such that, even with its present strength, a telegram from a central source to each State adjutant general is all that is necessary speedily to bring down upon Senators and Representatives a flood of telegrams and letters from every congressional district in the United States, urging or demanding that some particular measure be favored or that some other measure be opposed. If it is difficult to resist such pressure now, how infinitely more difficult will it be in the future to resist similar pressure from a greatly enlarged militia, flushed by the victory of the passage of this bill, and encouraged by it to make further demands and to support them by the methods that have already been found effective?"

In view of the fact that it is by no means certain that our militia can be made into a force that can be depended upon safely in the exigencies of a modern war unless it is first developed and expanded at a staggering expense far beyond anything that is now hinted at by the advocates of the pending measure, it may well be asked whether it is not better to stop where we now are rather than to embark upon a course that will surely involve us in the expenditure of sums of incalculable magnitude and that will produce results that in the crucial test of war may be found to be worse than useless, because they may have bred in us a false sense of security and a confidence not well founded.

In the report of the majority of the committee it is asserted that under the operation of existing law the Organized Militia that we now have has been raised to a high state of efficiency, the causes of its previous inefficiency having been removed by the so-called Dick law and other recent legislation. Then why not permit the beneficent operation of existing law to continue without attempting to increase the strength of the force at the expense of the United States by new and untried legislation that will lead us no man knows whither? The States now maintain, as the framers of the Constitution clearly intended that they should, all the Organized Militia that they feel able and willing to maintain. Let the General Government continue to aid the States by liberal appropriations along the lines that it is now following, increasing those appropriations to meet any increase in militia strength that the States may see fit to make, but do not let us undertake to force such an increase of strength by the hothouse method of Federal subsidy.

If the arguments hereinbefore set forth are not sufficient to show the unwisdom of the proposed legislation, it will hardly be worth while to discuss at length various other objections that have been urged or that may be urged against it. Some of those objections are that the Constitution confers no authority upon Congress to "support" or "maintain" State militia; that the proposed legislation will unduly extend Federal power over State troops; that it will enable the President in any emergency that he may deem grave to deprive any State of all of its troops, leaving that State powerless, perhaps, to suppress violence or insurrection within its own borders or otherwise to execute its own laws; that it will very likely weaken the control of the States over their own troops and will foster among

those troops the idea that their first allegiance is to the Federal Government that supports them and not to the States under whose authority they are raised and maintained; and, finally, that the expense incident to the proposed development and expansion of the militia will sooner or later be met, in part at least, by a material curtailment of the appropriations for and doubtless by a reduction in the strength of the Regular Army which will have no political weight or influence whatever as compared with the expanded Organized Militia.

The minority making this report is convinced that the legislation proposed by the pending bill is not only unwise, but that it is dangerous in the extreme. Rather than enter upon a legislative course that will inevitably entail upon the General Government an enormous expense, which may be found in dire emergency to have been wasted, a course that will surely lead to the creation of a great military force that will become so powerful politically that Congress wili be no more able to resist its demands than it has been to resist the demands of the far less compactly organized and manageable army of pension applicants and their friends, this minority would favor a reasonable increase of the Regular Army, leaving the States to maintain their own troops in their own way and at their own expense, without any aid whatever from the United States. Objectionable as such an increase of the Regular Army would be, it would have the merit of assuring us the possession of an armed force that in time of war would by its persistent training be worth all of its cost, which undoubtedly would be cheaper in the end than the cost of the great semimilitary, semicivil organization, wielding tremendous political power, that will grow up as surely as the sun will rise and set if the course of legislation outlined by the pending bill is once entered

upon.

It now costs more than a thousand million dollars a year to support the Federal Government. Measures are pending before Congress, or being investigated by committees, which if approved will add hundreds of millions to the annual toll exacted from the taxpayer. Very few if any will cost more than the "militia pay bill." None will cost more than the "militia pay bill" if it shall develop as there is every reason to expect it will develop in a few years.

This Congress is pledged to economy; it is pledged to a reduction of taxes. If this measure is enacted into law, there will not only be no permanent reduction in customs or other taxes, but the legislative body will be forced to find new sources of revenue.

In this connection it ought to be remembered that the proposed law fixes no limit to the expansion of the Organized Militia. It should also be remembered that there are about 20,000,000 males in the United States of the military age (18 to 45 years) and that these eligibles increase each year at the rate of about 750,000.

Thus it will be seen there is abundant room for the indefinite growth of this proposed new body of paid Government servants. JAMES L. SLAYDEN.

O

FOREIGN PURCHASE OF AMERICAN-GROWN TOBACCO.

JULY 31, 1912.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed.

Mr. FLOOD, from the Committee on Foreign Affairs, submitted the

following

REPORT.

[To accompany H. R. 70.]

The Committee on Foreign Affairs, to whom was referred the bill (H. R. 70) to constitute a commission to investigate the purchase of American-grown tobacco by the Governments of foreign countries, having had the same under consideration, report it back without amendment and with the recommendation that the bill do pass.

Tobacco is a product of great importance to the American farmer and is the most important crop in large sections of many States of the Union. Much of the tobacco raised in Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and other States is bought by the Governments of Italy, Austria, France, Spain, and Japan. There is nowhere any competition between these Governments for the purchase of this tobacco. Whether this is accidental or by arrangement is a matter that is disputed. At any rate, all growers of tobacco who raise the class of tobacco that is bought by these foreign Governments know that the price paid the producer has steadily declined and unless some relief is afforded, these men will be forced to give up raising a crop which for generations has been the monied crop of their communities. On the other hand, the Governments that buy, manufacture, and sell this tobacco derive enormous revenues from it, which revenues are increasing from year to year. Italy received as revenue on tobacco last year over $34,000,000; Austria over $85,000,000; France one-fifth of her entire revenue, and Japan and Spain very large revenues, while the American farmers who grow this tobacco did not get the cost of production.

This resolution provides for the appointment of a commission, consisting of three Senators and three Members of the House of Repre sentatives, to investigate the conditions under which Governments of foreign countries purchase American tobacco and ascertain whether