Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1906-12-15
GREAT WAR DEBTS.
How Jay Cooke Came to the Aid OF
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
egg 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-
STA in 1871, after having increased
her debt almost a 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-
lions, exceeded the total amount of
money in circulation in the entire
world. To the French, the whole cost
of the war and its subsequent events,
with the indemnity, was about 81, $780,
e0O,00 of Indebtedness.
Russia and Japan came to the end
of their recent war after Russia had
added about $500, OO0, 900 to her debt,
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 $3.50, 100000.
These sums seem great but the
American civil war added to the debt
of the Union nearly $4,000, 000,O 900, 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 great 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 o.
| 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 &c
| counted to have achieved a great tri-
umph when he sent Washington $50
900 for his operations around Trenton.
and borrowed $4,000 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 a few millions to aid the gov
eminent 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-treasuries 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
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 a 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 eff
fected his funding of the debt if he
had been permitted to undertake it.
What he did in this line under Sec
rotary Boutwell,, through the famous
syndicate "a word which was
brought into the language to describe
this operation), was well done, after
envious rivals had first been tried and
had failed to perform the service for
| he