Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/477

Rh its violation, or complete abandonment, in periods of great emergency.

In the case of the United States the condition of the country previous to the civil war, as already pointed out, was very curiously such as to create great indifference to this, in common with almost every other economic or financial topic. The nation and the several States composing it were at the period referred to comparatively free from debt. All taxation was light. Direct taxation by the Federal Government had become a matter of history, no taxes of this character having been imposed for nearly half a century. Pauperism was mainly restricted to persons of foreign nativity, while to all who were willing to practice industry and economy, the ability to command a good subsistence, if not an ultimate competence, seemed comparatively easy. Why should a nation under such circumstances trouble itself about difficult and intricate problems in finance or political economy? And taking counsel of the proverb, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," the nation did not. But, with the advent of war in 1861, the creation of an enormous national debt, and a gigantic, unsystematic, and complex system of taxation, a resort to irredeemable paper money and the suspension of specie payments, the condition of things as above stated rapidly changed; and the questions and problems which in popular estimation were before insignificant have rapidly become so important, as to constitute not only the theme of never-ending popular discussion, but also the issues which mainly divide the national political parties of the country. And as illustrating in some degree the nature and strength of what may be termed the motor or impelling influences which have forced these changes in public opinion, what can be more pertinent than the fact that the State of New York alone now annually raises by taxation to meet the expenditures of State and local governments a sum ($91,232,012 in 1890) more than one half in excess of the net ordinary expenditures of the Federal Government in 1860 ($60,086,754). In this latter year the cost to the people of the United States for the maintenance of their national, State, and local governments was probably less than three dollars per capita. For the year 1890, an approximately correct estimate for like expenditures was $13.65 per capita.

These questions and problems have not, however, come up simultaneously for consideration, but have been gradually evolved, as it were, from the changing condition of affairs, and somewhat in the following order: First, the national debt and its transition from a miscellaneous to a consolidated character; second, the readjustment of the war system of internal taxation; third, the question of currency, specie redemption, and legal tender—on which topics alone more than three hundred separate publications,