War or Junk

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 28, 1903

War or Junk.—It is either war or junk with the great battle-ship and that soon, and after the war it is junk anyway. It is a lot of money to expend for such purposes. For instance, “the armored cruiser Brooklyn, finished seven years ago at a cost of nearly $3,000,000, must now be modernized at a cost of $1,000,000. The fast cruisers Columbia and Minneapolis, built in 1892 and 1893 at a cost of $2,275,000 and $2,690,000 respectively, are now reported as ‘practically obsolete,’ and the battle-ships Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, and Oregon, all less than nine years old and costing together above $12,000,000, are ‘becoming old as battle-ships go’ and must soon be put on the retired list,” so a great eastern paper tells us. Greater appropriations are called for, and already nearly $80,000,000 a year is spent in adding to the “white fleet.”