An Era of Extravagance.
By Editor
We are not pointing out figures or facts because we are in politics in any way. The demon of extravagance seems to control men and women when every condition, every comparison, ought to demand economy. From our own general government down extravagance dominates the life. For instance, the last Congress authorized expenditure amounting to $1,098,347,184, or more than one thousand million dollars, nearly one per cent of our entire national wealth, nearly one half of the national wealth of Switzerland or Portugal, more than the assessed valuation real and personal of any state in the Union save fourteen, more than twice the value of all our wheat crop, more than $50 for every family in the United States. Senator Aldrich, the wealth center of the Senate, some time ago intimated that more than $300,000,000 was wasted each year at Washington, which the New York World declares is equal to $16.33 a year for each family. And the same spirit of extravagance takes hold upon more than half the people. Sometime the crash will come and the wrecks will be many.