Amador ledger. (Jackson, Amador County, Calif.) 1875-19??, 1909-10-01
Controller Nye On
Government Expenses

on the Growth of Public Expenditures. y
The paper began by quoting the state.
ment of Prof c. ]. Bullock Of Harvard
University before legislative com
mittee that in the state of Massachusetts
various taxes take 40 per cent of the in
come from investments, while in the first
half of the nineteenth century taxes
amounted to less than 10 per cent of in
vestment incomes This, Mr.. Nye said
shows in a striking way the direction
in which all modern communities are
tending, although few have yet travelled
so far as Massachusetts, where the
public appropriation of the products
of industry for social use has gone
futher than in any other state. But the
census of 1900 showed that California
came next to Massachusetts in per capita
taxation for all purposes.
Natural Increase.
This progress in the direction Of
constantly increasing public expenditure
is not unnatural and it does not appear
to be necessarily an evil when the es-
sential nature of taxation is considered.
II is simply the subtraction from the
general fund of wealth which private
industry has created of a certain pro-
portion to be publicly expended-that is,
through the agency of government-1nd
in many instances this method of ex-
pendtuure will go futher in the pur
chase of the things desired and needed
by the great body of citizens than would
even the best directed private eXpen-
diture The annual expenditure by the
United States postoffice department. of
$500, 600, 600 and by the department of
agriculture of Sl2, 100000 we're in
stanced as public expenditures which
are really two of the greatest economies
ever devised, because, it wousd require
far greater aggregate of Individual
expenditures to do the asrne thing which
these public OUTLAWS accomplish.
Illustrating the econmic law of con-
SANITY increasing expenditure as civili-
zation advances and governments be-
come more democratic, figures were
given to show that in European
countries the national budgets generally
grew at the rate of one or two hundred
per cent increase with each century,
until the nineteenth century was re-
reached when the increase was five
hundred per cent in hundred years.
The same or greater rate of increase
prevailed in local taxation and expen
diture as prevailed in national eXpen
ditures. A little more than a century
ago the per capita cost of the govern
ment of New York city was $3.50, aud
now it is between $40 and $50 In early
days the cost of our federal government
was but 81. so for each person in the
country, while last year it was ST. So.
In the year 1902 the census bureau
investigated taxation and expenditure in
all of the states, and in California the
aggregate expenditure of our state
county, municipal and district govern
ment was found to be S45, 600, 000 Dur
ing the six years since that report there
has been an advance all along the line,
and Controller Nye, after the best
Investigation he could make, came to
the conclusion that last year the total
public expenditures in California were
more than $50, 900. OOO or $50 per per
son, and $50 for each family of five
Figures Show Increase.
The speaker gave figures to show how
rapidly the cost of the county govern
ments has increased In 1890 the total
amount of taxes charged up in all the
counties for county purposes was be-
tween SO, 600, 900, and $4,000, 600, and
last year it was $24, 000 900. Between
1900 and 1908 the amount of taxes an
nually charged up increased 81 per cent,
which was double the increase in the
preceding ten years. In 1906 the total
amount of such taxes was in round
numbers $l8, 100000, 1907 it was r.
600, 600, and in 1908 it was S24, 600, 600.
All of the counties have participated in
the increase, but it has been mos: rapid
in the counties like Los Angeles and
Alameda, which have been growing
fastest. In Los Angeles the increase
has been equal to 264 per cent, and in
Alameda to 1856 per cent. A large in
crease in the rate of road tax has been
made one main cause, but the county
governments have simply responded to
the same general impulses which are
driving all governments forward in the
direction of multiplied expenditures.
In 1880 the municipal debts Of Cali