Now compare the plan for a Homecroft Reserve and its results, from the financial point of view, with this proposition to increase the Regular Army to a total strength of 200,000 men. The annual cost of an increase of 100,000 men in the Regular Army would be $100,000,000 a year; or $5,000,000,000 in fifty years. Every dollar of that huge sum would be drawn from the people by taxation. When spent it would be gone, leaving nothing to show for its expenditure. The economic value of the labor of 100,000 men would be wasted. That would be another $5,000,000,000 in fifty years, estimating the potential labor value of each man at $1000 a year. That makes the stupendous total economic loss and waste of money and human labor of ten billion dollars in fifty years,--an amount ten times as large as the whole national debt of the United States,--an amount as large as the combined national debts of Great Britain and France, which an eminent authority has said are so large that they never can be paid. _Measure up against that proposition the Homecroft Reserve plan and compare results:_ Every $1000 of capital invested in the establishment of the Homecroft Reserve will reclaim and fully equip an acre Homecroft with a Reservist and his family on it. There is no reason why the capital necessary for that should be provided from current revenues. In fact it should not be so provided, because it would be invested in property to be perpetually owned by the national government, from which future generations will derive an enormous annual revenue. A fixed average valuation of one thousand dollars for each Homecroft would be more than enough to cover the cost of reclamation, preparation for occupancy, building roads, houses, and outbuildings, water systems, sanitation, institutes for instruction, schools, libraries,--in fact everything needed to be done to make each Homecroft ready for occupancy as a productive acre garden home, with a complete community organization. It would also cover the cost of the original military equipment of the Reservist who would occupy the Homecroft.