Our job is to represent the tax-payers. Somebody must visualize the nation. You men visualize the thing before you; you see the local picture. We see more than that; we see the whole picture; and our job is not only to see that the rights of those under our care are protected and preserved, but that the rights of the people who are not under our care and under whose care we are, are protected. We represent the tax-payers of the nation. They have been mighty patriotic; they have been liberal; they have not grumbled; they have paid the price; they have paid it with courage; and they have shown their patriotism. They have shown their unselfish devotion to liberty. They are willing to meet any expense that may be imposed for the proper care of those who fell before the bullets of the enemy; but they want and will insist upon proper supervision of the expenditures. They have a right to that. They have a right to relief from the burdens of taxation to the extent that we can help to give them that relief; and it is your job and mine and that of every other man in the government service,—whether he be a dollar-a-year man or whether he be given fifty thousand dollars a year for the privilege of service,—to do everything in his power to make the people of America feel that they are not misrepresented in anything we may do. The expenses of the Government for 1919 were nineteen billions; for 1920, seven billion, five hundred; for 1921, six billion, five hundred; for 1922, four billion, thirty-four millions; but a billion, eight hundred and forty-five millions of that are in three fixed charges, i.e., nine hundred and seventy-five million dollars a year for interest on the public debt, which did not exist before the war; three hundred and eighty-one million dollars a year for the sinking-fund, which did not exist before the war; four hundred and eighty-nine million dollars a year for the care of the men that you are here to represent, for their hospitalization, allotments, allowances, insurance, and so on; so that we have that fixed charge in these three items that never existed before. Our Government in the future is bound to cost twice what it ever cost before, and so we have everybody in the United States watching every dollar of expenditure. We have seven million tax-payers now that pay out of their incomes,—seven million people watching what we do. Before the war we did not have any of these people. They did not care what you did; how much money you spent, or where you got it. They did not have to pay it; it was not being paid directly. Now it is paid direct, and the more tax-payers you have got paying into the Treasury, the more account you have got to have of what you do with the government funds.