The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-07-01
Beginning The Fiscol Year
B Fssdsr;e ]. Haskin.

This is the day when the United
 States has it's annual stock-taking. II is the day when Uncle Sam strikes his
 balance for the year. sees how snuch he has received how much he has
 spent, how much he has on hand. and
 begins to figure on getting rid of that
 billion dollars Congress gave him TOT pin money at its last session. Ho has
 found out that during the past year
 he has spent more than he has made
 many millions more. But as he had
 to save from his income of past years. he has not felt the pinch of poverty.
 During the coming fiscal year he will have more money to spend than ever }before. And if the sudden impulse for
 economy does not die, the sum spent In
 the coming fiscal year will represent the maximum governmental expendi- lture in . single twelve month, and from this time on high-water mark will not soon be reached again.
 Uncle Sam opened q new set of books today. Wherever there 10 dollar or his money spent or received there ia a new account opened The old set will
 be closed and balanced just as soon as
 the reports from the ends of the earth get in It will be after the first of August when the last account Is closed
 and the final loss and gain account Is made out. In the meantime. every gov- l ernment official from southernmost Florida to northernmost Alaska will I be gathering together all the data which will disclose the operations for
 the year in his Jurisdiction. Every I postmaster. every rural carrier. every court official. will add to the volume
 of reports that come in. All of which
 means lots of work for the book keep CTS. Each one Of tens of thousands of reports must be received, digested,
 tabulated, and properly placed in the general reckoning. f8T' The number of accounts that appear in the governments ledsers Is almost
 beyond belief. The Statistical Ab- 1 stract, a volume of nearly 800 pages, Is a collection of the footings of all these general accounts for each fiscal | year of governmental history. To cover them all 1t has to be filled with | figures from title page to flnis. Each
 entry represents separate general &C., count. and each general account may represent many thousand special ac- counts. If one wants to know how many farms were irrigated and how many acres were in them, together
 with the cost of construction and opera ton, there is an account which tells him all about that If he wants to know how many children of school age,
 
 attending school how many are boys and how many are girls together with the salaries of teachers, there is gen. l eral account that will give him all this | information. If he wants to know | great many things about the wages and occupations of the people there are accounts which satisfy his curiosity. Accounts are kept showing railroad ac- cidents, the number of telegrans sent.
 the number of failures in business, and thousands of others of like nature. l During the present month these will l be made up and closed to cover the year that ended at midnight last night. l This Statistical Abstract is most l remarkable volume. After every l bureau, division and department of the l government has closed its accounts for
 the year. Mir. o. P. Austin. a former
 newspaper correspondent, and his staff | of clerks, come along and gather to- gether the footings. When the whole task is done they have material for | 272 tables. each one of which shows l from one to a dozen different things. | The abstract makes its appearance
 many months after the fiscal year closes, but if there Is anything the | government has done that may be ex- 1 pressed in figures and Is overlooked. | that item has not been discovered. 1 And not only does 1t show what the government has done, but what the people here and throughout the world ! are doing. the prices they are paying for the things they eat, wear, and use,
 how much money they possess and thousands of other things about which figures are supposed not to lie.
 The present fiscal year promises to
 be one of more than ordinary interest. It will be a record of the first full
 year of the Taft administration. When | A Al.- all NhA country will have set of figures | which, correctly interpreted. will tell whether MT. Taft has made good. The past year has closed with a deficit; | will the present one end with a sur
 plus? Upon this question the pending tariff measure perhaps will have de- ciding effect. It Is twelve years since | fiscal year had a new tariff law with which to reckon. It always has ] been difficult thing to approximate 1 the revenues which will be derived | under a new tariff law. If the country
 takes 1t well and keeps up It's demand | for imports the law will be a success,
 but if the people get nervous and stop | importations to any important degree
 the law will be a failure. Students of
 fiscal matters generally agree that the
 apparent effect of a tariff law depends
 more on the mental attitude of the people than on the law itself It Is
 just like a man heavily in debt; as | long as his creditors have confidence | in hins there is no trouble but let them
 suspect him and there are bankruptcy | proceedi.=irs. If the people assume that
 the new tarlEs is wise the next fiscal
 year will show healthy conditions: if | they do not so regard 1t. the result
 certainly will be different
 Every branch of tNe government will have more money to sxpend during this
 fiscal year than 1t Tad during the past | one. and some of tkem very much more. The Department of Agriculture will
 have more than a million dollars to
 spend this year above what it spent
 during the year now closed, the army
 will have nearly $6.00o.000 more, forti-
 fications will get a million dollars
 above what was spent on them last
 year. and the navy will have over $14.-
 000. 900 more. The sundry civil expen-
 ditures will jump from $111,000,000 to | $137 ,OO0, ,000. There Is one thing cer-
 tain, and that Is that expenditures will
 stay more closely within the range of
 appropriations than was the custom
 for many years. Formerly, when the
 executive branches of the government
 asked for a certain appropriation and
 failed to get as much as they thought ! they ought to have, the officials would go ahead and spend as much as they
 thought proper. The result was that
 each year there was a huge deficiency appropriation to be made, because
 someone thought he knew more than ! Gnau concarpInu