Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1885 — EXAMINE THE BOOKS. [ARTICLE]

EXAMINE THE BOOKS.

The Necessity for This Clear to the Most Obtuse Intelligence. Republican exultation over the accurate balancing of the cash in the United Stntes Treasury is too pronounced and loud to be wholly genuine. It deceives nobody, not even themselves. Nobody anticipated any shortage in the cash account, and there would have been just as much surprise among Democrats as among Republicans if a shortage had been shown. The Treasury proper, that is, the cash room, is the last place where any stealing would be like .y or practicable. It is one of the necessities of the business that the cash should be balanced and the balance verified daily; and until this is done the employe are compelled to remain in the office. Only by a combination of all the persons through whose hands the money passes or who have custody of it could any abstraction be made. Such a combination it would be almost impossible to effect. Every m mber of it would know that he was in the power of every other, and that any change in the official force would, almost inevitably bring sure detection. A large combination, moreover, would mean small profits and division; and the minimum of results with the maximum of risk is not attractive to the dishonest.

It would have been safe to predict, then, at any time that the cash count in the Treasury would come out right to a cent as it has. If there has been any fraud in that branch of the Government it will be found in the books, where concealment is comparatively easy, and involves collusion on the part pf but few. The accuracy of the cash count, and its correspondence with the figures shown by te e books, is not at all conclusive as to the accuracy of the latter, or.of the fact that they have been honestly kept. Still less is it conclusive as to the honesty of the book-keeping in other branches beside the Treas-

ury. It is a consideration of this fact which shows the Bepublican exultation unfounded. They misrepresent when they say the Democratic cry was “count the ca h.” The Democratic cry was “overhaul the books; and wherever that has been done thoroughly and impartially the necessity for doing it has been made clear. In the Agricultural Bureau, for instance, a mere surface examination of the books shows the most astounding mismanagement, if nothing worse. Of the SIOO,OOO appropriation for the seed division, which sh uld have lasted till the 30th of June, every dollar was expended before May 1, or so shown to be by the book. The books also show the purchase of sorghum aeed by the hundred bushels at $2,35 to $2.95 a bushel, when the same seed could have been bo’t at twenty-five cents a bushel. This may be mere mismanagement; but if it occurred in a private business there would be a very rigid inquiry on the part of those furnishing the funds to ascertain if there were nothing worse than mismanagement. No private business house would accept as final the showing of the book-k' eper and cashier accounting for the expenditure of thousands of dollars by the alleged purchase of goods at ten times the market price. Nor should the taxpayers of the country accept any such showing from the agents who have been disbursing their money and professing to keep an account of it.

This exhibit from the Agricultural Bureau illustrates very forcibly the folly of accepting mere accuracy of cash count or even an accurate balancing of the books as evidence of honesty and good management. It shows that the books may balance to a cent, as it is claimed they do in the Internal Bevenue Department, while thousands of dollars have been squandered or misappropriated.—Detroit Free Press. '