460 STATE AGEICUXTURAL SOCIETY. 
by our idleness, a steadily increasing foreign debt, and gold at a high and 
increasing premium. 
A great number of healthy men are seeking or holding public offices as a 
means of easy support, while tlie number and cost of such offices ought to be 
largely reduced. Young men, if you would have your manhood dwindle and 
fade away, and be a genteel and subservient pauper, be a seeker for Govern¬ 
ment office. If you would be manly and independent, keep to your farms and 
trades. 
People talk about specie payments, and bonds, and debt. Overtrading with 
Europe, and underwork at home, and want of development of our great 
resources, cause these financial troubles. Remove these causes, and we can 
resume specie payment in two years without distress or revulsion. 
At the close of a great war, when we ought to have been prudent, if ever, 
our reckless importations reached $43'7,000,000, or, deducting $9,000,000 
specie imported, $428,000,000. But the Secretary of the Treasury says that 
the undervaluations at the Custom House are some',20 per cent., which is a low 
estimate, and we must add that amount, or $86,720,000, and make a total of 
$614,320,000, for a single year’s imports in 1867. Of this vast sum there was 
Cotton manufactures. $30,844,391 
Iron and Steel. 24,000,000 
Wool and its manufactures. 66;800,000 
$121,644,391 
All this the Northwest alone should have produced or manufactured, but 
we have gone on and allowed our imports to far exceed our exports or 
ability to pay, until our debt in Europe, mostly in England and Germany, is 
some $1,600,000,000, including National, State, railroad and municipal 
bonds and stocks; and our National obligations in the shape of bonds are 
tossed about by foreign bankers at a shameful and ruinous discount. The 
yearly interest of this great debt is $90,000,000, in gold, or more than all our 
mines produce. 
From January 1st to August 1st, seven months, the exports of specie to 
Europe were $60,000,000, while our receipts from California were but 
$26,000,000, and at last the “ New York Shipping and Comme'^cial Zist,^^ 
uttering the views of great bankers and importers, says on the 8th of August; 
“Various theories have been adduced (in regard to the rise of gold), but it 
would not be difficult to show that the real cause is mainly the result of an 
uneven foreign trade movement, that is, the undue preponderance of im¬ 
ports over exports, thus leaving a large balance against the country, which 
is necessarily draining us of a vast amount of treasure, since bonds are no 
longer available, in adequate quantities, for that purpose.” I am glad to see 
in such a journal sueh clear statement of our danger and its main cause. 
Repeatedly, for years back, I have made the same statement, which was 
passed by almost unheeded, but is at last seen in all^its dangerous magnitude. 
More work and less extravagance, more production and less importation^ 
