Extravagance and Ruin by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 6, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 18.

Extravagance and Ruin.

By Editor

Earnest statesmen and students of economics are lifting warning voices relative to the extravagance of this nation and its consequent ruin, unless retrenchment be made the order of the day. The London Spectator says:—

"Men still living can remember well when in France every half million of State expenditure was watched with grudging jealousy, when Joseph Hume was an object of dread to every department of the British Government, and when every American boasted that under the Federal system a citizen was almost untaxed, that pensions were unknown and impossible, and that the idea of a national debt was as much hated as that of a standing army."

But this can not be said now. The Spectator remarks: "What is certain is that the American Government is going to tax its people almost as bad as the English were taxed when Sydney Smith wrote of taxation with a pen dipped in oil of vitriol." Ex-Secretary of Agriculture, J. Sterling Morton, shows in the April Forum that in 1840, with a population of only 17,000,000, the per capita expense was only $1.41, while in 1890, with 62,000,000 population, the expenditures of the government amounted to $4.75 per capita. These are "net ordinary expenditures" in these respective fiscal years. The gross expenditures per capita were: 1840, $1.65; 1890, $10.06. Says Mr. Morton:—

"Sound economists hold that under ordinary conditions the cost of administration should decline per capita as population increases. And no authority will contend that with a population of 62,000,000 the cost per capita should aggregate three times as much as it was in 1840." "Why should there be billions appropriated now where 500 millions to 800 millions would be sufficient for legitimate governmental disbursements?" "The gigantic sums smuggled out of the treasury, disguised as necessary for sundry civil expenses, are increasing from year to year. This is shown by the fact that during the years from 1888 to 1897 there was taken by this method $284,602,604. This startling sum is an increase of more than 58 millions of dollars over the amount appropriated by the same system of false pretense in legislation in the preceding decade. Thus ten years developed an increase of 25 per cent in appropriations for 'sundry civil expenses.' As a further comparison, the appropriations by Congress under this heading for the fiscal years 1878, 1879, and 1880, amounted to $61,772,715; while for the fiscal years of 1895, 1896, and 1897, the amount was $90,764,590—an increase of more than forty-seven per cent."

But the majority of the people are as extravagant as the government. Wants are multiplied, simplicity and frugality are forgotten; self-denial is confined to Lent, or a self-denial week, on the part of most professed Christians. What we wish to note is that all these evidences are signs of decay and national ruin. So went Babylon, Persia, Grecia, Rome.