e conservative counsels
prevailed. Four great Liberty Loans were floated, all the agencies of
modern publicity being employed to enlist popular interest. The first
loan had four and a half million subscribers; the fourth more than
twenty million. Combined with loans were heavy taxes. A progressive tax
was laid upon incomes beginning with four per cent on incomes in the
lower ranges and rising to sixty-three per cent of that part of any
income above $2,000,000. A progressive tax was levied upon inheritances.
An excess profits tax was laid upon all corporations and partnerships,
rising in amount to sixty per cent of the net income in excess of
thirty-three per cent on the invested capital. "This," said a
distinguished economist, "is the high-water mark in the history of
taxation. Never before in the annals of civilization has an attempt been
made to take as much as two-thirds of a man's income by taxation."

=Mobilizing Material Resources.=--No stone was left unturned to provide
the arms, munitions, supplies, and transportation required in the
gigantic undertaking. Between the declaration of war and the armistice,
Congress enacted law after law relative to food supplies, raw materials,
railways, mines, ships, forests, and industrial enterprises. No power
over the lives and property of citizens, deemed necessary to the
prosecution of the armed conflict, was withheld from the government. The
farmer's wheat, the housewife's sugar, coal at the mines, labor in the
factories, ships at the wharves, trade with friendly countries, the
railways, banks, stores, private fortunes--all were mobilized and laid
under whatever obligations the government deemed imperative. Never was a
nation more completely devoted to a single cause.

A law of August 10, 1917, gave the President power to fix the prices of
wheat and coal and to take almost any steps necessary to prevent
monopoly and excessive prices. By a series of measures, enlarging the
principles of the shipping act of 1916, ships and shipyards were brought
under public control and the government was empowered to embark upon a
great ship-building program. In December, 1917, the government assumed
for the period of the war the operation of the railways under a
presidential proclamation which was elaborated in March, 1918, by act of
Congress. In the summer of 1918 the express, telephone, and telegraph
business of the entire country passed under government control. By war
risk insurance ac