The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-02-14
A RAMBLE IN STATISTICS.

your DOOkkeeper is a dry, methodical,
plodding fellow, given to addition, d.
vision, and, socially, to silence. He
cannot help it. He may have been
the most jovial Of men before he be-
came the slave of the ledger, but daily
association with figures, hard, relent-
less, unbending figures, all bone and no
flesh, unsympathetic, brings atrophy to
mirth and humor and sociability. SO
to nine and ninety out of every hun
dred a ramble among the statistics of
trade or finance is as dreary and re-
pellant as a stroll over desert whose
barrenness is relieved only by cacti and
sage brush But every business man
has to scan the figures of his trade if
he would not have his annual trial
balance give him a nightmare, and ev-
cry citizen, equal shareholder in the
great business concern the govern
ment, must also bear the tedium Of an
occasional inspection of the books if
he would keep that concern from going
into insolvency.
What does this government cost me-?
What is it's income and where does it
get it? What is it spending? These are
all questions that no prudent citizen
can afford to neglect to ask and to
get answered. He asks them Of his
city and his state, and it is none the
less his interest to ask them Of his
nation because that nation does not
present him with an annual tax bill
and demand it's payment under pain
of distress of goods and chattels, but,
store and other bills. We invite all
such to accompany us in a ramble af-
ter the answers through the nineteenth
annual Statistical Abstract, issued by
the statistical bureau Of the treasury,
the national bookkeeper and account
ant. The net ordinary receipts of the
government in 1896 were $4.59 for each
one Of the 71,263,000 men, women and
children estimated to be, in that year,
sheltered under the old flag. Running
back, we find this is quite a decrease
of income from 1890, when it was Sc Al,
but we reflect that it was in that year
that congress adopted a revenue bill
which stated in its title that 1T was in
tended "to reduce revenue" 1t did this
nicely as long as it was at work, for
we see that in 1894 it had cut the an
nual income to $436. The increase
since is due to the change Of business
managers made in 1892.
The outgo. or, as the statisticion puts
it, the net ordinary expenditures for
1896, was S4.94 per capita, an excess Of
spending Of IS cents for each one Of
those seventy-odd million beings. 1t is
not much for one Of them, but in the
aggregate amounts to a snug sum. we
are not spending as much as we were,
only 10 cents a head more than in 1890.
when we first heard Of a biilion-dollar
congress, and the experiment was be-
gun of trying to make prosperity by
decreasing income and increasing out
go. While that policy was being played
we spent in 1893 $573 for each blessed
soul in the country, a sum whose equal
we will not find, running back the
years, until we get to 1876, when it
was $5.87, $2.11 Of that was interest on
the public debt, which was only "a
cents in $685. and So cents Of it was for
pensions, which formed $237 of the
spending in 1893 Interest and pensions
were $2.74 in 1876 and $271 twenty years
later, so what we saved in interest has
been nearly balanced by what we have
added to pensions. Interest cost us
40 cents in 1896 and pensions $196, show
ing that, thanks to "the endless chain"
we enlarged our interest account Is
cents if we have cut the pension bills
keeping books in the pension office
now.
Where does this income come from?
Chiefly from taxes paid on things we
buy abroad with the things we send
there out Of our surplus, and called
duties and imposts, but better known
as tariffs, and from taxes paid on
liquors we drink and tobacco we smoke
customs was 1920 and from internal
taxation $2.06 for each one Of US, leav-
ing 80 cents to be had from oleomar-
garine and other minor sources We
were getting about $3.50 head from
the tariff before the Fifty-first
congress began reducing revenue
by raising taxes, and did it
SO well that customs fell to $190
in 1894, when that policy fell into the
ditch. When the Fifty-fourth congress
tried to get more money out of whisky
by adding 20 cents a gallon to the tax,
it, too, found that increasing taxes did
not increase income always, for we
only get $206 now where we got $2.35
in 1892. It is quite evident that even
congressman do not know everything.
ROAIANCING CORRESPONDENTS.