The saving in expense was
a notable economy. You will see that by these figures: We touched
a trifle over 700 of the 800 patients; at former rates, this would
have cost the government about $240; at the new rate we pulled
through for about $35, thus saving upward of $200 at one swoop.
To appreciate the full magnitude of this stroke, consider these
other figures: the annual expenses of a national government amount
to the equivalent of a contribution of three days' average wages of
every individual of the population, counting every individual as
if he were a man. If you take a nation of 60,000,000, where average
wages are $2 per day, three days' wages taken from each individual
will provide $360,000,000 and pay the government's expenses. In my
day, in my own country, this money was collected from imposts,
and the citizen imagined that the foreign importer paid it, and it
made him comfortable to think so; whereas, in fact, it was paid
by the American people, and was so equally and exactly distributed
among them that the annual cost to the 100-millionaire and the
annual cost to the sucking child of the day-laborer was precisely
the same--each paid $6. Nothing could be equaler than that,
I reckon. Well, Scotland and Ireland were tributary to Arthur,
and the united populations of the British Islands amounted to
something less than 1,000,000.
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