work has grown self-supporting in the United States is shown by the fact that last year, 1907, there was a net gain of $21,000, after the interest on the loans and investments had been paid. If a home does not show signs of being successful financially, its location will be changed or it will be discontinued.[28]

Another advantage lies in the fact that men who were socially dependent are made self-supporting. We should place emphasis on the effect on the man himself as well as on the community. We saw how these men were given to understand that they were earning their own livelihood and were not recipients of charity, and how they were encouraged by the receipt of wages, to be increased as their productiveness increased. The relief given is true relief in that the man earns it himself and realizes this fact, and because, along with this realization, comes a return of manhood and independence. Of course if men have lost all manhood and have no desire to be independent, but simply to live as easily as possible on what may be given them, the above is not the result; but few such get into the industrial homes, as they know better and have no wish to work as these men do, and if they get in temporarily, they are soon sorted out. Thus it cannot be said of these homes as is said of many institutions, that they pauperize men in place of helping them. The institution that makes men work for everything they get and provides some sort of channel for their ambition, maintaining itself meanwhile as a paying concern, is not pauperizing in its tendency.

Still another advantage of this work is found in the saving of the community's funds. Of late years, more and more, the principle has been advanced and brought before the public, that the starving and unemployed are to be cared for in some way, and we are willing to tax ourselves to provide for this. As far back as the census of 1890, we find that the United States spent annually $40,000,000 in charities and over $12,000,000 in penal and reformatory institutions. Probably the total expenditure for these two objects to-day would be nearer $60,000,000 annually. What percentage of this $60,000,000 would go to the class of people aided by the Army industrial work would be hard to ascertain or approximate, but there is room for a great extension of this kind of work, and the Army's efforts are most suggestive. In some of the European countries, especially Germany, many helpful experiments along this line are in progress, but conditions in the United States are vastly different. In any case social economists are agreed that vast sums are spent annually in our country to little or no purpose from the point of view of social relief. In the year 1907, 8,696 men were cared for in the United States industrial homes of the Army. This means just that amount of saving to the nation that it would have cost the regular municipal and state charities to have dealt with these 8,696 men, since these men were aided by a self-supporting organization and paid for their own support. This work, then, if carried far enough, would effect quite a saving of taxes.

But along with advantages there may be disadvantages. Some objections have been raised to this branch of the Army's work. For instance, it is stated that industries entered into by the Army tend to hurt economic conditions with regard to both wages and prices.[29] With regard to wages it is urged that the Army will keep for its industries, workers in constraint of one kind or another, paying them a lower wage than the same workers could procure outside, and thus lowering the wages in the respective industries. We do not consider this objection a strong one. Let us forget for the present the philanthropic side of the industrial work, and look on it as a distinctly economic enterprise, as a factor of production. We think it quite likely that a manager, anxious above everything else to make his institution a financial success, would make an endeavor to keep as long as possible, and at as low wages as possible, men who could receive more on the outside. He might even try to retain men for whom he could secure better positions through the employment bureau, if he needed their services, and times were so good that no other applicant offered to take their place, but this he could not succeed in doing to any serious extent; for, in the first place, the restraint exercised over the men is very slight, and secondly, if the men could secure better wages, it would not be long before they found it out and left the home voluntarily. It would be just the same as in any industry in which most of the workers are ignorant. They would remain under low wages just as long as their ignorance and lack of initiative would allow, but sooner or later the relatively able man would seek the best wage. Hence the able man would seek the best wage, and his place would be taken by one, possibly morally and physically unable to procure any wage, or, in other words, belonging to the unemployable class. If it should come to the point of the Army's hiring able men to carry on the work without aiding the outcasts, it must compete in the market for them and pay the market price. The only real danger would lie in the Army's industrial work securing a strong enough position in some industry to be able to dictate terms to labor in an industry, but this is so unlikely as to be almost irrelevant and even in such an almost inconceivable case, the danger would be only temporary. Labor would still be able to drift sufficiently to another agency, not controlled by the Army and thus bring up wages again. This is the more true in that any industry, in which the Army engages, must of necessity be one in which unskilled labor is competent.[30] In addition to this, from personal investigation, we can state that a large part of the labor employed in these plants of the Army is at any rate temporarily inefficient labor and would not have much chance in securing employment elsewhere. Finally, though considered a charitable work, this branch of the army is, as already stated, a corporation, a business enterprise financed by investors who receive interest on their investments; hence, to the same extent that it is a financial enterprise, like other such enterprises, it will be governed by the rate of wages.[31]

Another objection has been raised by critics, to the effect that the Army, through its industry, enters into competition with existing firms and companies to the harm of the latter.[32] For instance they urge that in the case of those engaged in second-hand goods and salvage, who are able to make a profit by buying their material, the army enters into an unfair competition, when it takes such material, given in charity, and sells at a lower figure. In so far as the army does undersell others this objection is valid, and we have no doubt that in some cases such is the truth. Doubtless some individuals and firms have been hurt in