The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1896-03-25
State Expenses.

80 ~ wv aAb
it alleges to be a statement of What
it costs to run Vermont" The Neus
deplores, in stunning head lines, the
I" enormous increase in our state ex-
penses in the last twelve years." and
processes to show how the peoples
hard-earned money is squandered."
To squander is to spend wastefully
and recklessly, as to squander O fortune.
We suppose the NeWs has used the
word advisedly. Assuming that its
statement of the states expenditures is
correct, where is the evidence that
|" the peoples hard-earned money!" or
any other money, has been %"squan-
dered," expended wastefully, as a prod
igal squanders his estate? Is the mere
fact of an increase in the states expend-
lures, or even its expenses, evidence
that the money has been squandered?
If so, who has squandered the money
the legislature that ordered it expended,
or the officials charged with its disburse-
ment?
Was the increase in the governors
salary, in 1884, from $1,000 to 81, 800 a
wasteful and prodigal use of money!
Was the increase of other official sala-
ries a squandering of money? If so,
which ones? Is the payment of S14 ,130
annually, as the Ne,Ds has it, to the
University of Vermont at Burlington,
or 50 400 to the College at Middlebury,
a squandering of money? Is the money
given to the Middlebury institution
squandered, but that to the Burlington
University wisely expended, by the
state? Is the increased expenditure for
agriculture a reckless and wasteful use
of money? Or for education? Was the
building of the Waterbury Asylum, after
the Brattleboro institution had notified
the state to provide for its patients else
where, the act of a prodigal, and has
the money appropriated for the con
struction and management of the Asy-
lum been used without economy or
Judgment? These are all questions that
should be answered adversely to the
state government in order to sustain the
contention of the critics of its admins
tration.
1t is interesting, as shedding light
upon the animus and as indicating the
value of these post facto criticisms of the
policy of the state and the management
of it's affairs, to note the fact that no
feature of the state policy, and no item
in the increase of the cost of admins
tering the government, was objected to
by the critics or criticised by them at
the time of the proposed increase of
salaries or the institution of a line of
policy with incidental appropriations to
carry it out. When there was an OPP
%portunity to interpose with effect, these
newspaper editors, who are now shout
ing themselves hoarse over the squan-
dering of the peoples hard-earned
money, were as dumb as oysters.
When some new sensation is to be con-
trived, or when a political campaign in
which votes are wanted, and anything
true or false-that may influence
votes, is %greedily seized upon, then this
old spirit of alleged scandalous and out
rageous growth of the cost of admins
tering the state government, which
tbrica apd aoain has haan 1o;d 10 ooo
jured up TO trick and frighten The
people.
In some departments of the state
government the WATCHMAN has long
believed that the expenditure is larger
than real necessity or the requirements
of a sound policy warrant. 1t has de-
clared its opposition to measures il
deemed unwise, when they were before