Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1906-12-07
GREAT WAR DEBTS.
How Jay Cooke Came TO the Aid Of
the Government.

the Government.
If the time ever comes when the his.
tory of wars shall be written on their
financial side it will be more clearly
understood how much armies and ma
vies, too often made the fulcrum of
every calculation, must depend upon
the energy, determination and STRAIT.
egy displayed in assembling the great
sums of money needed in modern war.
fare. The world has grown larger in
many ways, but 40 years does not
make Jay Cookies task seem the less
gigantic, France succumbed to Prus,
sia in 1871, after having increased
her debt almost thousand million
dollars, exclusive of one thousand mil-
| lions more which Bismarck eXacted of
| her and which, the French represen-
| tatives declared at the peace negotia.
tons, exceeded the total amount of
money in circulation in the entire
world. To the French, the whole cost
of the war and it's subsequent events,
with the indemnity, was about s1,S5o,.
| 100000 of indebtedness.
Russia and Japan came to the end
| of their recent war after Russia had
added about $500 100000 to her debt,
| a sum which, of course, takes no ac-
| count of her vanished navy or of many
| losses which later will be carried into
the general fund of debt. According
to the figures supplied by the Japanese
embassy at Washington, Japan spent
about S650,000,000.
These sums seem great, but the
American civil war added to the debt
of the Union nearly 00,000,000, ex
elusive of all that could be obtained
by heavy ordinary and extraordinary
taxes. We raised in five years, by
long loans and virtually without for
eign aid, almost as grott sum as
Great Britain borrowed and put to her
national account between the years
1898 and 1916, the period of her pro-
longed struggles with Napoleon and
her second war with the United States.
Besides all this, there were the
debts of the loyal states and munich
palities, as well as a great mass OF
obligations which never were and
never will be paid, representing the
pecuniary sacrifice of the people of
the South. Indeed, the most careful
and expert of statisticians cannot
compute the full money cost of the
civil war.
The vast expenditures of these
years, says Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer,
could not be met by any method
known to the government of the
United States. Robert Morris was ac-
counted to have achieved a great tri-
umph when he sent Washington $50,
900 for his operations around Trenton,
and borrowed 100000 from Rocham-
beau to set the ragged continental
army before Yorktown. Stephen Gil
rard, another Philadelphia financier,
had assisted the government during
the war of 1872; and Enoch w. Clarke
and Jay Cooke, of the same city, pro-
cured few millions to aid the gov
ernment in waging it's unrighteous
war upon Mexico.
But this was as nothing in compari
son with the great five-twenty loan
and the seven-thirty loan which, in the
civil war, Jay Cooke placed for Secre-
taries Chase, Fessenden and McCul
loch, and the subsidiary operations
which he undertook for the govern
ment. He sold bonds and treasury
notes when the department and the
sub-tTeasuries could not sell them,
just as he could catch fish where
others angled in vain. He surpassed
all other bankers and brokers whom
the secretaries tried, and they were
always forced to return to him as the
one man who could draw from the
people the great sums daily needed to
manage the war.
The unalterable foe of the repudia-
ton of any of the debt which he had
been instrumental in distributing
among the people, Jay Cooke was both
wholesome and potent influence in
political and financial circles after the
war had ended. He advocated the
early conversion of six per cent bonds
into issues bearing a lower rate of in
terest, and certainly would have ef.
fected his funding of the debt If he
had been permitted to undertake it.
What he did in this line under Sec
retary Boutwell,, through the famous
syndicate" "a word which was
brought into the language to describe
this operation), was we'll done, after
envious rivals had first been tried and
had failed to perform the service for
the treasury.