Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1868-10-01
iATIOaAL ENDEBTEDHESs.
1902, 600, 900 Paid OfTin Three Years.
At that Rate tho Entire Debt could be
Paid In Ten Years.
Democratic Rnls Cost 100000 Per Year More Than
Rspublicanism. :-r-
Read and Inwardly Digest.

We present to our readers the most
valuable document of the campaign.-
Gov. Seymour, in anote to friend, COM
planned that the Republicans were al
lowed TO dodge the financial issue, and
Mr.. Edward Atkinson, of Boston,-a
business man and not a mere politician
has made the following clear, truthful,
succint statement of the actual condition
of the national Indebtedness, in which
it is proved that over $500, 900, 900, or one
fourth of our whole debt, has been paid
off within three years and that after the
recent large reductions of taxation. the
whole debt can easily be paid before 1900.
It also shows that the expenditures for
the last three years have each year been
about Sll 900, 900 in gold less than Mr..
Buchanan'sl 8 last year 1-=5ss.s.5 :.
Mr.. Atkinson made this exhibit to the
Massachusetts, convention that met few
days since. He said:
GENTLEMEN: In short address pro-
pose to justify, not to defend, the fiscal
policy of the Republican party. As the
honored chairman of our State Central
Committee has well said, its fiscal record
needs no defence; it is record of which
we may well be proud.
In speaking to you | shall pass rapidly
over the details, but you will find all my
statements verified in detail in the
printed reports.
If there is any merit in the following
analysis of the expenditures of the last
three years, i can only claim the plan
and method upon which it is placed De-
fore you. All the data have been fur
nished me by the Hon. David A. Wells.
| long since perceived that the statement
commonly accepted as that of the max
imum debt of the United States was not
one which covered the liability of the
government on the first of August, 1865,
by many millions of dollars.
THE DEBT IN 1865.
| knew this from the fact that the
manufacturing corporations, with which
l am myself connected held at that date
several millions of dollars of claims upon
the government through the contractors
to whom we had sold material for the
tents and clothing for the army, for
which they had then had no settlement.
These accounts were afterwards allowed,
and we took our pay in Z $40 notes, most
Of which We sold to the savings banks of
Massachusetts, from whom we had bor-
rowed the money to enable us to do the
work and furnish the goods. f
These notes were, of course, converted
into ive-twenty bonds by the savings
banks, and now form portion of the
debt which the democratic party pro-
poses to repudiate by Issuing greenbacks
or, in other words, substituting failed
paper bearing no interest for a debt not
yet due; the avowed purpose of the
Southern wing of the party, who at least
may claim the need of praise for their
bold avowal, being to render the green
back valueless and then to repudiate it,
In this scheme they are led by George
H. Pendleton and covertly supported by
Horatio Seymour, it being now asserted
by his supporters that he has retracted
his previous views, and that there is u
substantial agreement between himself
and Pendleton as to what should be the
fiscal policy of the country.