648 POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. 



wiped out the narrow margin that separates independence from de- 

 pendence — self-support and self-respect from destitution and pau- 

 perism. The hatred of the rich, the denunciation of capital, the 

 contempt for the Church, the bloody insurrections of labor, the 

 general feeling of rancor, accompanied by an increase of the tyr- 

 anny of trades unions and government regulations, are not the 

 inevitable manifestations of envy, ignorance, and criminal instincts; 

 they are the inevitable fruits of the perpetual aggressions in a 

 thousand forms that spring from politics and war. But instead of 

 acting upon this natural interpretation of the signs of the times and 

 seeking to solve the social problem in the only way that it can be 

 solved, the " new " reformers tormenting the world are engaged 

 in the invention of schemes that add to the public bi^rdens and 

 hasten the nation's decay. 



The reckless expenditure of public money in the United States 

 has not been confined to any particular political division nor to 

 any particular geographical section. The national. State, and mu- 

 nicipal governments have seemed to vie with one another in the 

 plunder of the taxpayer. From the North, the South, the East, and 

 the West have come the same complaints of excessive burdens.* 

 But figures are needed to give these statements the vividness of 

 reality. Beginning with national expenditures, Mr. Roberts says 

 that during the decade from 1820 to 1830 they were $1.07 per 

 capita; from 1851 to 1861, they were $2.06; and for the year 

 1894, $6.08. " In a word," he adds, " the per capita expense of 

 the national Government in 1894 was nearly six times as great as 

 it was in 1820, and nearly three times as great as it was in the 

 decade before our great civil war." The per capita expenditures 

 of the State of New York in 1830 were $1.30, thirty years later 



* From the mass of proofs of this statement in my possession I will select only one. In 

 a call for a convention at Portland, Me., on the 10th of June last, of all persons " interested 

 in the revision of the present system of State taxation and a more economical management 

 of the State affairs," it is stated that " the expenses of the State have increased fifty per 

 cent in ten vears, while the wealth and population of the State have steadily declined." 

 The object of the convention was " to protest against the course of extravagance that is 

 rapidlv bringing reproach upon the government of the State and reducing the farmers and 

 taxpavers to automatons to grind out revenue to be absorbed by a rapacious and ever- 

 multiplving horde of office-holders, who devour the people's substance as fast as they pro- 

 duce it." After showing how " once prosperous farming towns and townships have been 

 reduced to but little better than a howling wilderness, the call says in conclusion : " These 

 once prosperous farming communities were redeemed from the native wilderness by men 

 who were no more temperate, industrious, or economical than the farmers of to-day, and 

 the prices they received for their products were as low as, and in some instances lower 

 than, to-day, but the fruits of their honest toil were not drawn from them as fast as ac- 

 quired by national, State, county, and, in many instances, by municipal extravagance, as it 

 is to-day." The plundered peasantry of Spain, Italy, or Russia, army ridden as they are, 

 coidil not have made a more just complaint. 



