Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 November 1877 — Ben Butler on Finance and Taxation. [ARTICLE]

Ben Butler on Finance and Taxation.

Gen. Butler was invited to address a public meeting, under the auspices of the Legal-Tender Club of New York city. Other engagements making it impossible for him to be present, the General writes : “I am unable to comprehend, appreciate and much less admire that system of Government finances which has so wrought upon the business and production of the country that over 2,000,000 workingmen and women who desire productive employment have not had it for the last two years, and by which the production they would have added to the wealth of the country during that time is lost. Assuming that each one in that number, skilled and unskilled, could have averaged two dollars per day for the working days of the past year, then we have lost $1,200,000,000, or about equal to half the national debt, by their enforced idleness, to say nothing of the loss of the morals of workingmen and women. How long men in active business, and property-holders, and holders of those kinds of property which are open to tax-gatherers, will permit a system of financial administration tb go on, by which their property shall depreciate 33 per cent, in its value, while the holders of property, such as notes, mortgages and bonds, which are untaxed because not open to the tax-gatherer, have their property appreciated and escape taxation, is a problem which the good sense of this country will solve at the coming Presidential election. ***** “lam informed that Mr. Duncan, of Duncan, Sherman & Co., went to Washington when the Currency bill was before the President and advised him to veto it because it was necessary to depreciate values. The President did veto the bill, values have been depreciated, I trust to an amount entirely satisfactory to Messrs. Duncan, Sherman & Co., however little their creditors may relish the process. ”