The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States / Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.

by John Clark Ridpath

WHEN SHALL WE REACH OUR NEW LEVEL OF EXPENDITURES?

“It is, perhaps, unsafe to base our calculations for the future on these analogies; but the wars already referred to have been of such varied character, and their financial effects have been so uniform, as to make it not unreasonable to expect that a similar result will follow our late war. If so, the decrease of our ordinary expenditures, exclusive of the principal and interest of the public debt, will continue until 1875 or 1876.

“It will be seen by an analysis of our expenditures, that, exclusive of charges on the public debt, nearly fifty million dollars are expenditures directly for the late war. Many of these expenditures will not again appear, such as the bounty and back pay of volunteer soldiers, and payment of illegal captures of British vessels and cargoes. We may reasonably expect that the expenditures for pensions will hereafter steadily decrease, unless our legislation should be unwarrantably extravagant. We may also expect a large decrease in expenditures for the internal revenue department. Possibly, we may ultimately be able to abolish the department altogether. In the accounting and disbursing bureaus of the treasury department, we may also expect a further reduction of the force now employed in settling war claims.

“We can not expect so rapid a reduction of the public debt and its burden of interest as we have witnessed for the last three years; but the reduction will doubtless continue, and the burden of interest will constantly decrease. I know it is not safe to attempt to forecast the future; but I venture to express the belief that if peace continues, the year 1876 will witness our ordinary expenditures reduced to one hundred and twenty-five million dollars, and the interest on our public debt to ninety-five million dollars; making our total expenditures, exclusive of payment on the principal of the public debt, two hundred and thirty million dollars. Judging from our own experience and from that of other nations, we may not hope thereafter to reach a lower figure. In making this estimate, I have assumed that there will be a considerable reduction of the burdens of taxation; and a revenue not nearly so great in excess of the expenditures as we now collect.”

Seven years afterwards, in the June number (1879) of the North American Review, General Garfield quoted the above paragraphs from the speech of January, 1872, and called attention to the fulfillment of his prediction in the following words:

“Reviewing the subject in the light of subsequent experience, it will be seen that the progress of reduction of expenditures from the war level has been very nearly in accordance with these expectations of seven years ago.

“The actual expenditures since the war, including interest on the public debt, as shown by the official record, were as follows:

1865	$1,297,555,224 41
1866	520,899,416 99
1867	357,542,675 16
1868	377,340,284 86
1869	322,865,277 80
1870	399,653,560 75
1871	292,177,188 25
1872	277,517,962 67
1873	290,345,245 33
1874	287,133,873 17
1875	274,623,392 84
1876	258,459,797 33
1877	238,660,008 93
1878	236,964,326 80

“Omitting the first of these years, in which the enormous payments to the army swelled the aggregate of expenses to $1,297,000,000, and beginning with the first full year after the termination of the war, it will be seen that the expenditures have been reduced, at first very rapidly, and then more slowly, from $520,000,000 in 1866 to about $237,000,000 in 1878.

“The estimate quoted above was that in 1876 expenditures would be reduced to $230,000,000, including $95,000,000 for interest on the public debt. In 1877, one year later than the estimated date, the actual reduction had reached $238,000,000, including $97,000,000 for interest on the public debt. [He means the expenditures had been reduced to $238,000,000.]

“It is evident that in 1877 we had very nearly reached the limit of possible reduction, for the aggregate expenditures of 1878 show a reduction below that of the preceding year of less than $2,000,000; and the expenditures, actual and estimated, for the current year ending June 30, 1879, are $240,000,000. It thus appears that 1878 was the turning-point from which, under the influence of the elements of normal growth, we may expect a constant, though it ought to be a small, annual increase of expenditures.”

If anywhere there is to be found a more scientific statesmanship than this, the average man knows not the place to seek it out. Garfield had discovered the law of the increase and decrease of national expenditures. It was as fixed as the laws which lengthen and shorten the day. Scientists agree that the laws of society are far more difficult of discovery and of demonstration than the laws of nature. Only one man in a generation makes any real advance in the study of those laws which pervade the affairs of men. In his philosophy of public expenditures, James A. Garfield was that man of his political generation. On March 5, 1874, in another speech on the same topic, he unfolded the philosophy and laws of growth of the public debt. As usual, it is an illumination of a vast and foggy subject. It is impossible to give, in our already crowded pages, even a synopsis of this address.

There can be no question that Garfield was the most perfect master of the themes of revenue and expenditure in his generation. With the exception of the tariff, they were not questions which could be brought into politics. In their nature, they were so dry and complicated that the House itself, much less the people, knew but little of the enormous labor performed by General Garfield on the subject. He applied his immense energies to the task as cheerfully as if the questions were those of the next campaign, instead of being known only in the committee-room. His research would gain him no contemporary laurels, his toil bring him no applause. But he grappled with the monster of public debt, which had its clutch on England’s throat, and was reaching toward the New Republic. He who knew so well how to thrill the audience and shake the building with plausive thunders, embodied the results of his work in speeches, which his friends possibly thought impractical and certainly tiresome. They lie embalmed in the mighty mausoleum of the Congressional Record, hidden away from the prying eyes of mankind. Some future statesman, with more industry or genius than his contemporaries, will, perchance, come with pick and shovel to excavate and disinter the buried children of the brain. If so, like the recently-discovered remains at Mycenæ and Thebes, they will be pronounced of royal blood.

We now pass to the last branch of the subject discussed in this chapter. This relates to the record of Garfield in relation to questions concerning the general character and tendency of American institutions.

This question opens the door to what would make a volume of General Garfield’s speeches. Under a rigid necessity of condensation, we can only give broken extracts from three addresses.

On July 2, 1873, before the students of the Western Reserve College, at Hudson, Ohio, he spoke on—