The Lake Charles echo. [volume] (Lake Charles, Parish of Calcasieu, La.) 1876-1898, 1876-11-02
WHAT THE REPUBLICAN, PARTY
COSTS.

COSTS.
Extract from Baltimore Speech Of Hon. Montgomery
Blair.
We are not now called upon to decide
which has been the better man, or which
has been the better party in the past,
but only which candidate and which
party suits the present emergency. The
partisan republican asks votes for his
party candidate, because his party car
ried the country through the late civil
war, preserved the union, and enamel
pated the slave; while the partisan dem
ocrat claims your suffrage because his
party carried the country through the
war of 1912, made all our vast acquisi
tions of territory, has maintained the
constitution, and conducted the govern
ment honestly and frugally during three
tourths of OurhistOry. The independent
voter will say: Your arguments are
good as far as they 60, but they do not
touch the question of the day. This the
hour of calamity. A paralysis is upon
the country. Business Ofeyery kind is
ruined. Capital is locked up, and the
Iaborer is idle. What your several party
candidates have done in the past and
what may be their merit, except as it
adapts them to rescue the people from
present wretchedness and to restore
them prosperity, is nothing to the pur-
pose of the present inquiry. We start
our inquiries with the conceded fact
that the financial condition of the coun-
try is deplorable, and that it has become
sounder the management of the republican
party. Hence upon that party deVOlves
the responsibility. The vast expen-
ditures and the heavy taxation which
have actually exceeded the earnings of
the people since the war, and which have
swept away all the treasury accumula-
tions of such vast numbers, have been
made and imposed by the republican
party. The great frauds of the credit
mobilier ring, of the whisky ring and of
the ten thousand other rings which have
preyed upon the people and IobEed them
of sums gilmore than sufficient to have
paid off the public debt, have grown up
and been fostered during the sway of
this party. The enormous frauds are
not disputed, and the only excuse at
tempted for the extravagant expenditure
by which the country has been ruined is
that the war occasioned it, and that the
democrats are responsible for the war.
The answer is, that the money was not
expended in carrying on the war; that
the public debt, created Ostensibly for
that purpose, was enhanced enormously
by the fraudulent contracts given for
mere party and personal objects. And
this answer is demonstrated to be true
by tables of expenditure, which Isubmit,
and which have derived trem the official
reports. The first shows the entire eX-
penditure prior to, during and since the
war. The second compares the eXPendl-
ture before and since the warm branches
of the service not effected by the war.
The first reveals the startling fact that
Grants seven years of administration
has already cost nearly as much as was
expended for all purposes during the
seventy-one years which preceded the
advent of the republicans to power, and
the second shows that his expenses IN
branches of the service having no rela-
ton to the war are more than three
times greater than the same service cost
in1S6l.
1t is not necessary to show that this
money has been applied to expand the
army of oficeholders to force OF eight
hundred thousand or a million Of men,
an organized, active, willing and thor
Oughly disciplined body OF unquestion-
Il. -, AatnIl how