Our National Debt by Jos. Clarke

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 30, 1873

Our National Debt.

By Jos. Clarke

FROM a speech of Gen. Butler at the New Hampshire State Fair, we glean the following items:—

Our national debt amounts to about $2,000,000,000, on which we pay about six per cent, or about $120,000,000; our State debts are about $400,000,000; and our railroads owe about $600,000,000; besides the debts of educational and ecclesiastical bodies. Most of this is due foreign bankers and capitalists. At the same time, our imports exceed our exports, and the soil from which the debts must be paid is being rapidly exhausted by a bad system of tillage; and the waste matter of our cities, which should go to fertilize the soil, is carried by sewers into our rivers and harbors, there to corrupt the waters, and choke them with filth, thus inviting pestilence and disease. Our capitalists invest their capital where it will command the highest rate of interest, without regard to the manufacturing or commercial interests of our country; our pine forests have been recklessly wasted, until we are indebted to Canada for much of this article.

Silks, satins, and broadcloths, says he, do not dress the land; and the effect is, that the wheat-producing region is rapidly receding westward, until wheat is brought from California around Cape Horn, 15,000 miles, and ground in the mills of Rochester, to feed the inhabitants of New York.

Truly, our country is laying the foundation for future trouble; and far-seeing statesmen are full of gloomy forebodings. Jos. CLARKE.