The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1895-06-07
LIVE ISSUES.
SURPLUS AND DEFICIT.

Deficit as it Did on the Sur
pIus-Grover's Nefarious
Schemes Brought
to Light.
During the first administration of
Mariah Halpin's man Cleveland,
this country was told in ponderous
sentences all about the awful havoc
that the surplus was making with
the prosperity of the people.
The Surplus became nightmare,
a scare crow, an old Man of the Sea;
and. we got to the point where we
could hardly go to bed in confidence
and comfort unless we first looked
under the bed to see that the sur
plus was not laying in wait to muir
der us in our slumbers.
Cleveland had kept talking about
Surplus, Surplus, Surplus, until lots
of us began to have the same feeling
toward it that a negro used to have
toward the Ku Klux Klan.
So seriously disturbed were we in
our minds about the dangers and
the deadfalls, the snares and the
mantraps, the deceits and the be-
trayals, which Mr.. Cleveland
assured us lurked in the inner
caverns of the Surplus, that we i'm
plored him to save us-tO save us
by any methods whatever from the
armed enemies of our national well
fare which crouched concealed
within the insides of this modern
Trojan Horse of Surplus.
After our scare was over, and the
Surplus had been met and con-
quered by the hero of Buzzard's
Roost, we grew calm enough to
listen to cold recital of the facts,
and to realize the exact nature of
the perils we had escaped.
The Surplus, it seemed, was a
pile of money which had been col
lected from the taxpayers, over
and above the needs of the Govern
ment, and which the Office holders
absolutely could not spend.
This was awful indeed.
1t is difficult to exaggerate the
mental agonies of two or three hun
bred thousand Office holders who
have to stand in sight of big pile
of public money day after day,
week after week, month after month,
and not have the power to lay their
feverish fingers upon it.
1t is the unwritten law of this
blessed Republic that the Govern
ment must spend at least as much
as 1.-THE taxpayers can be made to
pay.
By an oversight, Congress had
failed to increase the expenses in
proportion to the increase of the
Tariff and Internal Revenue Taxes,
and hence, to the disgust and dis
may of Cleveland and his tribe, the
taxes far exceeded the expenses
Congress had authorized.
No wonder the disturbance in
official circles was so great. No
wonder Mr.. Cleveland made the
continent tremble as he heavily
held forth on the dangers Of a
Surplus.
What was to be done with the
money?
Andrew Jackson had, under
similar circumstances, divided the
Surplus among the states-thus
sending the money the Government
didn't need back to the people to
whom it belonged.
Jackson, however, and his kind
of Democracy being deader than
Pharaoh, Mr.. Cleveland never once
thought of getting that Surplus
money back into the pockets of the
people to whom it belonged.
AS is well known, he made a
gift of about sixty million dollars
of it to the Wall street bondholders,
by way of premiums, for the priv
ilege of paying Government debts
which were not due.
Another sixty million dollars of
it was given to the national bank
ers, free of interest, to lend out at
usury to the poor devils to whom
it belonged.
These little palliatives eased the
pains of the Surplus very consid
erably, and held its fever under