HOW TO RESUME SPECIE PAYMENTS.

IN COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON THE STATE OF THE UNION, FEBRUARY 5, 1869.

[At this time both Congress and the country were surfeited with ambitious financial theories, not one of which accomplished any discoverable good. The simple and purely practical views here presented were quite naturally suggested, and their utterance is deemed to have been timely.]

MR. CHAIRMAN, -The simple and obvious solution of our financial problem is to be found in the reduction of expenditures and the increase of productive capital. This is the chosen and sure way to specie payments, and to real national wealth; and the time has come to confess it, and to plant our feet on the solid ground of actual facts. The country has been fed on mere theories long enough. The brains of our public men have been teeming with ambitious schemes of finance, all radically differing from each other, bewildering rather than enlightening the general mind, exciting false hopes, and kindling among the people a feverish discontent, instead of invoking the spirit of patience in the endeavor to accept the real facts of our condition and the lesson which they teach. Other methods are now wanting. Discarding metaphysical projects, and putting aside the folly of looking to the government for some splendid financial panacea which shall at once lift from us the burden of our debt and immortalize its discoverer, we must now turn to the plain and old-fashioned ways and means I have mentioned. There is no royal road out of our national indebtedThere is no short cut to specie payments by the mere fiat of law, independent of our actual resources. Legislation can create a debt, but it cannot pay it. We might just as reasonably attempt to change the properties of the triangle by act of Congress, as to fix the precise day on which our national debt shall be fully paid, or our greenbacks redeemed in coin; since we have no foreknowledge of the course of the seasons, the productiveness of our crops, the vicissitudes of trade, the character and influence of future legislation, and other contingencies which must vitally affect our financial resources at any given time hereafter. Finance is no juggle, no sleight-of-hand by which the nation can be relieved of

ness.

its great debt without actual payment; nor is it a Black Art, utterly inscrutable to the plain common sense of the people. Sir, what we want, I repeat, is economy of expenditure and increased production. On the one hand, we must cut down all appropriations to the lowest practicable figure; refuse all frightful subsidies to railroads, steamships, and kindred projects; revise the tariff and tax laws in the interest of labor; and so reform the civil service that the money drawn from the earnings of the people shall not be squandered by incompetent and corrupt officials. On the other hand, the government, keeping within the scope of its legitimate powers, must remove as far as possible all obstructions to industrial development, and thus encourage foreign immigration, the extension of our railways, the settlement of our Western States and Territories, and the profitable exploration of our mines. It is this second branch of my subject, Mr. Chairman, of which I wish briefly to speak; but before I do this, allow me to refer to some very instructive and encouraging facts and figures affecting our condition and prospects as a people.

According to Commissioner Wells, one million natives of foreign countries have permanently settled in the United States from the 1st day of July, 1865, to the 1st day of December, 1868. He says that investigations have been made which show that these immigrants bring with them on an average eighty dollars per head, while their average value as producers is one thousand dollars each. Immigration, then, since the close of the war, has added eighty million dollars directly, and five hundred million dollars indirectly, to the resources of the country.

Within the last four to five years our cotton manufactures have increased nearly thirty-two per cent. The increase in our woolen manufactures has been much larger.

The product of pig-iron from 1863 to 1868 has grown from 947 tons to 1,550,000 tons, being considerably in excess of that of Great Britain. The product of copper from 1860 to 1867 has increased from 6,000 tons to 11,735 tons.

The product of petroleum during the years 1864 and 1865 averaged 30,000,000 gallons. In 1867 it was over 67,000,000 gallons, and for 1868, up to the 18th of December, it was 94,774,291 gallons.

The product of coal during the past three years has averaged, annually, nearly 13,000,000 tons.

Our lake tonnage in 1866 increased twenty-four per cent.; in 1867, eleven per cent.

Our average monthly consumption of sugars for the year ending November 30, 1868, was 12,061,280 pounds more than during the same period in the year 1867; and our average monthly consumption of coffee 734 tons more than during the same period of the previous year.

The increase in our agricultural products has been not less remarkable. The number of sheep in Ohio in 1868 was 1,274,204 greater than in the year 1865, and it is estimated that the number has doubled within the past eight years. The increase of her hogs from the year 1865 to that of 1868 was 700,000. The aggregate of her corn, wheat, and oats in 1865 was 107,414,278 bushels; in 1866 it was 118,061,911; and in 1867, 141,000,000. The number of hogs packed at the West in 1865–66 was 1,705,955; in 1866-67 it was 2,490,791; and in 1867-68, 2,781,084. The present rate of increase of the crop of Indian corn throughout the whole country is three and one half per cent., and the crop for the year 1868 is estimated at 1,100,000,000 bushels. In the 1867 Minnesota exported wheat alone amounting to 12,000,000 bushels, which sold at an average of two dollars per bushel, increasing our national wealth on this one article alone twenty-four million dollars; and it is estimated that not over two per cent. of her lands have yet been reduced to actual settlement. I quote these calculations from the late able speech of Mr. WINDOM, one of the representatives of that State.

Our cotton crop for the past year is estimated at 545,524 bales more than that of the previous year. Our railway extension since the year 1835 has averaged, annually, 1,156 miles. From the year 1865, and inclusive of that year, nearly 8,000 miles have been constructed in the United States, being more than double the annual increase prior to that time. Mr. Wells estimates that the gross earnings of our roads pay for their construction in a little more than four years. The total annual value of all the merchandise traffic on all the roads at present equals seven billions two hundred and seventy-three millions two hundred thousand dollars. From 1851 to 1867 the tonnage transportation has increased at the rate of eight hundred per cent. and the actual increase has been 42,480,000 tons. The estimated value of railway merchandise for the past sixteen years has increased at the rate of nearly four hundred millions of dollars per annum. From the year 1858 to 1868 the increase of tonnage on all the roads in the United States has been sixteen times greater than the increase of population. Within the ten years from 1850 to 1860, our population has in

creased fifty times faster than that of Great Britain, while the annual expenses of the latter are one hundred and nineteen millions greater than ours. During the railroad era of our country, from the year 1830 to 1860, the increase of our wealth was five hundred and eight per cent. From 1840 to 1860, our percentage of increase was two hundred and fifty-six, being more than eighteen times greater than that of Great Britain; and the most remarkable fact must be mentioned, that in the three and a half years following the close of the war we have paid eight hundred millions of dollars of our national debt.

In referring to our railway system it should be observed that according to the best authorities on the subject our foreign immigration increases in the ratio of our railway extension, and that the settlement of our vacant lands, the increase of productive wealth, and consequently of our exports and imports, conform to the same general principle. It should likewise be remembered that railway extension is now conceded to be the best if not the only solution of the Indian problem, and that just so far and so fast as this solution shall be accomplished, the frightful expenditures demanded by our Indian wars will be avoided. According to official documents, the expense of suppressing Indian hostilities in the years 1864 and 1865 was over thirty millions of dollars, and for every dead Indian two millions of dollars were expended. Our Indian troubles for the past six years have cost us one hundred million dollars, and calculations have been made showing that our several Indian wars within the past twenty years have cost us seven hundred and fifty millions. The present current expense of our Indian wars is believed to be one million dollars per week, or about one hundred and forty-four thousand dollars per day. These expenditures are startling, but they will be constantly diminished as our railways are extended, with the swelling column of settlement and civilization which will follow along their lines, fill up our distant borders, and augment our productive wealth.

Mr. Chairman, this encouraging exhibit of our national resources and material development would be wanting in its true value and full significance if not considered in the light of an important reflection which it naturally suggests. In the exact proportion that our wealth increases our national debt diminishes. To have paid our debt of 1865 twenty-eight years ago would have required ninety per cent. of all the property of the United States. But the payment of the debt of 1868 would only require about eight per cent. of our present wealth. The ratio of increase of our

wealth from 1850 to 1860 was nearly one hundred and twentyfour and one half per cent.; but assuming that it will hereafter be only one hundred per cent. every ten years, the aggregate of our wealth in the year 1900, according to Commissioner Wells, will be two hundred and fifty-eight billions five hundred and fourteen millions of dollars.

In 1900, therefore, our debt will be only one eighth as great a burden as it is now, or one ninetieth of what it would have been on the property of 1840. A tax of one per cent. would then wipe out the entire indebtedness, while now it requires one per cent. to pay the current annual expenses of the government. The nation, therefore, in the gratifying growth of its wealth which I have sketched is growing out of debt, and growing so fast as to put to flight all apprehension as to our financial future. What it wants is free scope, and the untrammeled use of its resources and energies; and this is forcibly illustrated by Commissioner Wells in his reference to the removal of the tax on manufactures, which compelled the Treasury to relinquish at least one hundred and seventy millions of dollars, and yet by stimulating the productive interests of the country it accelerated the payment of our debt. It did this, he says, on the principle that the power of contributing to the public revenue increases geometrically as the activity of production and circulation increases arithmetically.

What, then, Mr. Chairman, is the lesson which these facts and figures plainly teach? Do they plead for some marvelous and as yet undiscovered scheme of finance, to supersede or help along the natural processes which we have seen are so hopefully at work? I have already answered this question. The true financial policy of the government to-day is that of a masterly inactivity, leaving the great forces of industry and trade to do their work, to "uncover our mountains of gold and silver," to build our railways, to multiply the tillers of the soil, and thus to solve the problem of our finances by the creation of wealth. "All that government can do," says Buckle, "is to afford the opportunity of progress; the progress, itself, must depend upon other matters." He asserts, as the general testimony of history, that the best laws that have been enacted in any country are those by which some former laws were repealed; and that while the power of government for evil is incalculable, its power for good, beyond the mere preservation of order and the punishment of crime, is negative only, and simply auxiliary to natural and social laws. All that Congress can do to improve our finances, or speed the payment of our debt, is to