Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1885 — Hoarding the Public Money. [ARTICLE]

Hoarding the Public Money.

A good many persons are wondering how the Democratic politicians can reconcile their campaign assertions about the surplus in the Treasury and Mr. Manning’s debt statement of last week. They often said last fall that the Republicans were hoarding hundreds of millions but last Friday the Secretary could show only a net cash balance in the Treasury of about twentyfour millions. There is no cause for wonder here on anybody’s part, for the Democratic leaders will not try to reconcile their contradictory statements about the surplus any more than they try to reconcile any other untruth they told. It will be time enough to wonder if at the end of four y*v' rs of Bourbon rule the Democrats have any balance at all to show in the Treasury.—New York Tribune.

To which the Indianapolis Sentinel replies: “The first man during the campaign that claimed that there were hundreds of millions of surplus in the United States Treasury was Major Calkins, the Republican candidate for of Indiana. He claimed that it was good to have such an immense surplus. Mr. Hendricks accepted his figures, but contended that it showed faulty statesmans 1 ? ip and bad management to hoard up millions and hundreds of millions of dollars in the United States Treasury. He demonstrated that it was the result f high taxtation, and that if the taxes were reduced the money would be in the pockets of the people, circulating in the channels of trade and turning the wheels of comm 'rce, and not lying inactive in the Treasury vaults. His argument n-ver was answered by the epublican nlatform orators or.the party organs. Instead of meeting the poin they jeered at him and misstated his pasition, charging bim with promising the people that if Cleveland and Hendricks were elected this surplus would be divided out among the people. And so it would be if the high protective taxation of the Republican party were redu. ed. The money would remain with the people instead of being hoarded in the United States Treasury. If there is no money in in the Treasury at the end of Mr. Cleveland’s administration it will be in the pockets of the people, and honestly there, and not among Star-route contractors, rings and jobbers, as was the case during the reign of Republicanism. The Democratic idea is to reduce taxation to the utmost limit compatible with the economical administration of the Government. This will not admit of a large surplus to be hoarded in the Treasury vaults.”