the name of Liberty. If we would read aright the gospel of Republican progress, Mr. President, commence at the beginning of that compendious, massive system, that abomination of desolation, Funded Debt. No matter what changes may have transpired in the ownership of the bonds, the fact remains that the Government originally sold them for greenbacks worth generally about 50 cents on the dollar in gold.

They were then payable in lawful money, which included the kind of money that was paid for them.

A little later they were made specifically payable in coin. Then in 1873 silver was demonetized, which made them payable exclusively in gold coin. Notwithstanding the Bland and Sherman laws, they are still held payable exclusively in gold, although silver is legal tender in all cases except where otherwise stipulated in the contract, and there is no such stipulation in regard to these bonds. The result is that the public is to-day paying the whole national debt at the rate of four dollars for one dollar received.

PRESIDENT: Do you mean by the "public" that there is an equitable assessment upon the entire population?

SENATOR: The 1-per-cent. capital class who own ninetenths of the national wealth (inclusive of non-interestbearing bonds) pays less than one-tenth of their indirect taxes; the well-to-do class pays less than one-quarter, while the poorer classes pay more than two-thirds of the indirect tax which returns to the bondholder four dollars for the one dollar received in payment of our national debt-that is, if we were paying on the national debt instead of adding to it at a rate which it is impossible to accurately estimate upon the basis of a Billion-and-a-Half-Glory-and-Gold Congress.

PRESIDENT: This huge specter-chimera of Bonded Debt.

is a shivering horror, howling and groaning all night. It will deprive the well-to-do as well as the industrial class of sleep. Surely you must have had a spectral vision.

SENATOR: In the January number of The Arena there is an article by that eminent historian, Dr. John Clark Ridpath, which is an absolute demonstration. He shows that on March 1, 1866, the total national debt was $2,827,868,959.46. By the close of the year 1895 we had paid upon it in interest alone $2,635,000,000, and upon the principal $1,700,000,000, making the enormous aggregate of $4,400,000,000. This left us still owing about $1,237,500,000, including premium on the bonds. We had paid more than three-fifths of the entire debt (besides the fabulous sum in interest), and yet the less than two-fifths remaining of the debt was worth more to the holders of it than the entire debt was on March 1, 1866. To pay the debt at the close of 1895 would require 8,673,406,000 more pounds of cotton, or 51,339,000 more barrels of pork, or 425,000,000 more pounds of wool, or 4,496,000,000 more pounds of bar iron than would have been necessary to pay it on March 1, 1866, when the nominal amount was two and a half times greater than it is now. As against this, it appears that it would take 643,000,000 pounds less sugar or 51,000,000 hundredweights less beef to pay the debt. That is, sugar and beef have not fallen quite so much as the other things. Beef has been kept up moderately by the increased foreign demand, while sugar is an article that we buy. More than nine-tenths of all we consume is imported. So the fact that sugar has kept up better than other things is a positive injury. Referring to these facts, Dr. Ridpath says (reads):

For thirty years the American people have been pouring into that horrid maelstrom the volume of their great re

source. They have paid on their debt, or at least they have paid, in this long period such a prodigious sum that arithmetic can scarcely express it. And yet it is the truth of the living God that in the year 1895, at its close the national debt of the United States, in its bonded and unbonded forms, will purchase as its equivalent in value as much of the average of twenty-five of the leading commodities of the American market, including real estate and labor, as the same debt would purchase at its maximum on March 1, 1866. The people have paid and paid for thirty years, and at the end have paid just this-nothing.

Look at this (points to diagram)!

National Debt,

$2,827,868,959.46

including premium on the bonds. We had paid more than three-fifths of the entire debt (besides the fabulous sum in interest), and yet less than the two-fifths remaining of the debt are worth more to the holders of it than the entire debt was on the first of March, 1866.

An expert statistician has said:

The American people have never realized the incalculable sums which have been paid out of their treasury in the ostensible work of discharging the interest and principal of the war debt of the nation. Sometime, perhaps, the final aggregate may be made up and historically recorded. Within the first ten years after the conclusion of the war, that is, at the close of the fiscal year, 1874-75, the government had already paid in interest only on the public debt $1,442,057,577! And this was but the beginning. At the close of the year 1895 the interest account has reached the prodigious total of more than two billions six hundred and thirty-five millions of dollars.

The verification of this astounding truth is as plain and irrefragable as any other arithmetical result.

On the first of March, 1866, the national debt was in exact figures

For the sake of easy computation the same may be stated in

round numbers at .

The debt at the close of the year 1895 (statement for November)

is

For convenience of counting, the same may be given in round numbers as

To this add ten per cent. (a very low estimate) for the present average premium on the debt (interest-bearing and non-interestbearing) above the par of gold

Total present gold value of the debt.

$1,125,000,000.00

112,500,000.00

$2,827,868,959.46

2,825,000,000.00

1,126,379,106.00

$1,237,500.000.00

PRESIDENT: To the ears of young generations of workers the historical retrospect of Indirect Taxation will sound like ten thousand trumpets. What is the Secretary's statement of the aggregate interest-bearing debt for May, 1900? (SENATOR reads:)

PRESIDENT: What are the revenues of the Government for the fiscal year 1900? (SENATOR reads:)