Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 November 1890 — Wasting the People’s Money. [ARTICLE]

Wasting the People’s Money.

Pbr years a system of taxes, originally imposed for the purpose of defraying the extraordinary expenses of a great war. and which in the first instance would never have been tolerated for any other purpose, has been continued. The result has been that a large amount of money, desirable for the wants of trade, has been withdrawn from circulation and locked up in the United Istates Treasury; and for some years past there has been no way of releasing it for public uses, except by buying bonds and so reducing our public debt On its face this seems all right, although there is no good reason why the present generation should have the whole burden of our national debt imposed upon its shoulders, and future generations, who will, in point of numbers and wealth, be better able to pay it, should be totally exempted. It does not, moreover, seem a good business policy to take money by taxation from the people worth, say, eight or-ten per cent, to them to keep, for the sake of paying off bonds drawing only four per cent, interest. But bo this as it may, there have not been for some years any bonds that the Secretary of the Treasury could call, to prfy or redeem, at his pleasure, boeanso there have been none due. And so the only way he has been able to obtain any bonds for redemption has been by offering to their owners a premium or bounty in addition to their lawful principal and accrued interest to come forward aud surrender them. Plain people, who do not keep the run of financial affairs, and who do not note how large the premium is getting to be, may be somewhat surprised to learn, that in September 1890, tha Secretary of the Treasury paid a bounty of over 26 per cent on more than 94,000,000 for the privilege of paying 916,000,000 of 4 per cent bonds, not due

until well Into the next Miitrjy, And the community approved ot this procedure, because it believed that by so doing a disastious money panic was averted. And the same plajn people may be more surprised to further learn that, as the result of this same policy, namely, of taxing the people to take from them high-priced money, and then paying a high price to get rid of it to the bondholders, the amount of money which the United States Treasury within the last three years has presented to the bondholders, whom public opinion has been accustomed to regard as having been already sufficiently favored bv exemptions from taxation and otherwise, has been in excess of fifty-one millions of dollars, necessitating fifty millions of unnecessary days’ work, which the present generation of American people have had to perform during the same period. Does it not become these same people to seriously' ask themselves how such a policy of taxation harmonizes with the idea of intelligent government—of government for the protection of industry and promotion of the interests of the whole people? How does such a policy promote the interests of the American farmers, whose farms are reported to be shingled all over with mortgages, and who, by a policy of high and unnecessary taxation, have to sell in tho cheapest market and buy in the dearest?

DAVID A. WELLS