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This debt, we repeat, has lapped over from previous years, and may be fully accounted for by the statement that in the years 1876 and 1877 we paid for the single items of stereotyping, printing the Confederate roster, and the extra cost of the large number of pages and extra copies of our Papers, the sum of $4,505.86—i. e., if we had run the Papers for 1876 and 1877 on the basis of the cost of publishing them in 1878 and 1879, we would have paid every dollar of our liabilities and had a surplus of $2,508.29.

It should be remembered, too, that out of our receipts from the Papers we have had to meet not only the cost of their publication, but all of the expenses of the Society as well, and that we now have on hand back volumes worth at least $5,500 (every one of which can be disposed of in the course of time), and stereotype-plates for nearly the whole of the first year, from which we can reprint ad libitum.

But we desire especially to call attention to the fact that beginning and continuing our publication during the worse years for such an enterprise the country has seen, we have not only been able to issue regularly our Papers, but to make them a most important auxiliary towards accumulating in our archives material which could readily be sold in the market for thousands of dollars, but which is of priceless value for the purposes for which our Society was organized.

We have thought it due alike to the Society and to the Committee to give these details; and we are happy to be able to add that we have made an arrangement by which in the future the Papers will be published without risk of indebtedness to the Society. But