The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1907-02-20

Who so free as I?
l have my pipes, my books, my dog.
My siphon and Old Rye!
No man with fewer cares is harried.
And yeti sometimes wish I'd married.
Sing song of Benedicts!
A baby and a wife
A home mine, ownl Who wouldn't be
Content with this, my life7
But-when old recollections tingle,
+ sometimes wish that 1 were single
Great War Debts.
If the time ever comes when the
history of wars shall be written on
their financial side. 1t will be more
clearly understood how much armies
and navies, too often made the full
crum of every calculation. must de-
pend upon the energya determination
and strategy displayed in assembling
the great sums of money needed IN
grown larger in many ways, but forty
years does not make Jay Cookies task
seem the less gigantic. France sue
cumbed to Prussia in 1871. after hav-
ing increased her debt about thous-
and million dollars, exclusive of the
great indemnity of one thousand mil
lions more, which Bismarck exacted OF
her, and which, the French represent
atives declared at the peace negotia-
lions, exceeded the total amount or
money in circulation in the entire
world. To the French, the whole Cost
of the war and its subsequent events,
teen hundred and fifty million dollars
of Indebtedness.
Russia and Japan came to the end
of their recent war after Russia had
added about $50O,000,0OO to her debt
a sum which, of course, takes no ae-
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 Japan
csc embassy at washington Japan
These sums seem great, but the
American civil war added to the DEBT
of the union nearly O,OO0, 0O0' ex-
elusive of all that could be obtained by
heavy ordinary and extraordlnary
taxes We raised in five years, by long
loans and virtually without foreign aid,
almost as great a sum as Great Brit
ain borrowed and put to her national
account between the years 1898 and
1916, the period of her prolonged
ond war with the United States.
Besides all this, there were the debts
of the loyal states and municipalities,
as well as a great mass of obligations
which never were and never will be
paid, representing the pecuniary sac
rifice of the people of the south. In
deed, the most careful an dexpert of
statisticians can not compute the full
money cost of the civil war.
The vast expenditures of these years
could not be met by any method known
to the government of the United States.
Robert Morris was accounted to have
achieved a great triumph when he sent
Washington $4,000 for his operations
around Trenton. and borrowed $4,000
from Rochambeau to set the ragged
Continental army before Yorktown
stephen Girard, another Philadelphia
financier, had assisted the government
during the Var of 1912, and Enoch W.
Clark and Jay Cooke, of the same city,
procured a few millions to aid the gov
-frrI,4O xrT,
upon Mexico. But this was as nothing
in comparison with the great five
twenty loan and the seven-thirty loan
which, in the civil war, Jay Cooke
den, and McCulloch, and the subsidiary
operations which he undertook for the
government. He sold bonds and treas
ury notes when the department and
the subtreasuries could not sell them,
just as he could catch fish where others
angled in vain. He surpassed all other
bankers and brokers whom the secre-
taries tried and they were always fore
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
a wholesome and a potent influence in
political and financial circles after the
war had ended. He advocated the
early conversion Of 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 Secre-
tary Boutwell,, through the famous
syndicate" Ca 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 reasury-Century Magazine.