Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1898 — THE STATE DEBT REDUCED [ARTICLE]

THE STATE DEBT REDUCED

Republican Administration Shows Decrease of Nearly Two Million Dollars. Figures on the state debt taken from the auditor of state’s report for 1893 and 1894 present the accompanying problem in arithmetic. In those years the Democrats had charge of the money vaults and the auditing of accounts: State’s foreign debt, 1890 S 8,056,615.12 State’s foreign debt, 1894 7,436,615.12 Reduction $ 620,000.00 This is applicable and necessary in any effort to understand what the Democratic auditor of state meant when ho reported in 1894 as follows: “Since the meeting of the last general assembly $910,000 of the public debt has been extinguished.” The general assembly referred to was that of 1893. It adjourned in March of that year and the last of the October following the same auditor of state reported that the state’s foreign debt was $8,006,615.12. That was only $50,000 less than the debt in 1890. Yet the auditor says in the text matter of his report of 1893 that “on April 1, that year, $340,000 in bonds were taken up.” He wanted the people to understand they were paid in cash. If they were, the payment should have been included in his 1893 debt statement. That wonld have made the foreign debt $390,000 less than that of 1890, instead of $50,000 as shown by his own figures. In the same connection in the text matter of his report of 1894 the Democratic auditor of state says: “April 1, 1894, $370,000 were retired and Nov. 1, 1894 $200,000 more were paid, making a total reduction of $910,000.” It has been shown by a little subtraction of figures taken from the same report that the actual redaction of the foreign debt from what it was in 1890 was only $620,000 or $290,000 short of what the auditor claimed in his text. Of this $200,000 can be explained away by its having no business in the public debt statement of that time. That $200,000 was paid Nov. 1, the day after the close of the fiscal year, when the foreign debt was given at $7,436,615.12. That leaves $90,000 to be accounted for, along with the $340,000 reported as taken up. The truth of the matter is the Democrats did more refunding of the state debt than paying it off in cash. At the close of the last fiscal year 1897 the Republican auditor of state in his public debt statement showed that it was sl,720,000 less than when the Democrats turned over the state to the Republicans. A BRAVE BOY’S WORDS. A special from Madison, lud., to the Indianapolis Journal, says: “Michael E. Garber, private in ComEny F, One Hundred and Fifty-ninth diana infantry, writes to his mother in this city as follows: “ ‘Don’t believe for a minute the newspaper accounts of Camp Meade and of our condition, for they are utterly unfounded. Ido not see how any person with any humane feeling or principle could write snch editorials as the New York Journal contains and cause so mnch suffering and worry by the soldiers’ friends aud families. Camp Meade is as pleasant a place as one wonld wish for a camp, and although the number in the division hospital increases a great deal daily it is because every person who has the slightest symptoms of fever is sent there immediately, and they generally return after a day or two.’ ” Young Garber comes of good American stock, and it is apparent from the way he writes that he has the proper conception of what constitutes true patriotism and of what is expected to constitute a true soldier. What connection there is between the conduct of the war and principles of free trade aud its variations one can hardly understand, bat it is a fact that all newspapers committed to everything bat protection of home industries are violently opposed to aud hysterically critical of General Alger’s management of the war department. Harper’s Weekly, for instance, is furiously wrought up over the sufferings of soldiers. In a recent issue it had, in pictures and comment, a very pronounced yellow streak. But it permitted a regular contributor to say: “The mind of man is too prone anyway to take kindly to oomplaints about food. With real hardships enough to stimulate their natnral tendencies toward faultfinding, otr heroes are now ogged on to extra strennons efforts in that direction by the hourly assurances of all the sensational papers in the country that they are starved, neglected and miscellaneously mismanaged. It must appear in the oamps just uow as if a soldier’s whole duty was to distrust authority, reject his food, bewail his fate and demand to be sent home.”