During the Republican period, wars were frequent, and although it seemed to be a unified country on the whole, there were many forces fighting openly and secretly behind the scenes.
The army, as a manifestation of the strength of one party, needs a lot of funds to raise and manage, and the funds consumed to raise an army generally include clothing, food, housing, transportation, ammunition and guns, military salaries and training expenses.
So how large can a million silver dollars during the Republic of China train an army?
First of all, it is necessary to understand the economic situation during the Republic of China, so as to figure out what can be done with a million silver dollars.
At this stage, the level of economic development on the mainland is low, and the production efficiency is relatively low. In such economic conditions, the amount of people's daily expenses is very small.
Generally speaking, compared to the current 100 yuan can buy more daily necessities, and according to statistical research, between 1912 and 1919, one silver dollar could buy 30 catties of rice, so one million silver dollars was a very large amount at that time.
Also, it is necessary to know which parts of the army spend money.
First, it is necessary to pay enough military salaries to recruit soldiers, the military salaries in the Republic of China period are relatively low compared to now, each person has more than 20 silver dollars per month as military salaries, but these more than 20 silver dollars are enough for a family's expenses for a month, so there are more people who enlisted in the army during the Republic of China.
Second, the job of gathering so many people is to train them, and of course, if the recruitment requirements are high or the people who come to join the army are veterans, then this part of the money can be negligible.
Thirdly, and most importantly, the cost of guns, although silver dollars bought a lot of food at that time, but it was not worth mentioning for guns, at that time a machine gun had already cost a thousand silver dollars, and a million silver dollars could only buy a thousand machine guns at most, and not including bullet money.
Therefore, although a million silver dollars can buy a lot of food and other necessities, for such expensive things as guns and ammunition, one million is not enough to spend.
In addition, if the army participates in the war, there will inevitably be casualties, and as a leader, he also needs to pay the soldiers' family medical expenses, which is also a large amount.
Therefore, if you want to build a well-equipped and brave army, I am afraid that the number of the army is only two or three thousand.
If an army is to be built that is under-equipped or even non-existent, then the number of this army will be sixty or seventy thousand, and there will certainly be no one million left after the end of the month after the payment of military salaries.
Even if an army of 60,000 or 70,000 people was raised and went to the battlefield, it could only be sent to death, and if an army of two or three thousand people wanted to make a career at that time, it could be said that it was more difficult than ascending to the sky.
And it is impossible to go through a war without casualties and weapons losses, so it is almost impossible to train an army without a fixed and large source of money during the Republic of China.
On the other hand, those military forces that made great achievements during the Republic of China period either relied on military salaries and subsidies distributed by the national government, or grabbed money everywhere.
At that time, the regular army was basically related to the government, if there was no relationship background and only one million silver dollars in hand to raise an army, then at best a bandit, it could not be placed on the regular battlefield at all.