The giving of internal protection is largely taken care of by the individual states, cities, or other political units. The Federal government, at times, is called upon to give assistance in supplying this class of protection. Reference to the table on page 51 will show the relative importance of protective expenditure by states, counties, and incorporated places. The tables in Chapter II. Characteristics Of Public Expenditures, pages 31 and 32, will show the relative importance of this class of expenditure to other expenditures of the different political units. The cost of protection in cities and incorporated places is much greater, both in toto and per capita, than in the states or counties. This is due to the maintenance of police and fire protection. This expenditure is also greater as a state item than for the counties. As an item of state expenditure it ranks comparatively low, coming about fourth in importance. In cities it is relatively high, coming about second. As cities increase in size the cost of protection increases more rapidly than the population. Reference to the table on page 34 shows the per capita expenditure of the smaller cities for protection to be considerably less than that of the larger ones. As in the case of the Federal government, this protection cannot be put on a cost and value of service basis. There is no way of knowing what the citizenship would be willing to give up rather than to do without the protective services. The direct economic returns may appear small, yet the immaterial returns are immeasurable.

1 A more detailed discussion of the cost of war will be found in Chapter XX. The Cost Of War.