Our Public Debts [pp. 205-222]

OUR PUBLIC DEBTS.
x870. 188o.
CLASSES OF DEBTS.
Amount. Per cent. Amount. Per cent.
State................ $352,866,698 40.62 $250,722,08I 21.11I
County.............. I87,565,540 2I.59 I71,268,757 I4.43
Municipal............ 328,244,520 37-79 765,545,760 64.46
Total:.............$868,676,758 IOO.OO $I,I87,536,598 IOO.oo00
Admitting that the figures of I870 are approximately correct, and the fact is established that tho in ten years nearly one
hundred million dollars of State debt has been scaled down,
repudiated, and declared illegal-wiped from the ledgers of the
State-the debt other than national has increased 37.70 per
cent. Had the hundred millions still remained an outstanding
debt, the increase of the above three classes of debt would have
been nearly fifty per cent. Taking the figures as they stand,
State debts have declined 29.94, county debts 8.68, and municipal debts have increased at the enormous rate of I33.22 per
cent.
However, these figures are misleading, because there is no
means of telling to what extent the sinking funds of large cities
entered into the calculations made in I870. Some cities may
have returned their debts to the United States marshals in
gross, and some after deducting the sinking fund. In the
present investigation the sinking fund whenever returned is
shown in the tables. This at once reduces the debts of the
large cities from $7IO,535,924 to $593,344,418, which may be
called net debt. Upon this indebtedness the per-capita tables
and rating according to relative indebtedness are made out.
Omitting for the present county, township, school-district, small
city, and village indebtedness, I shall call attention to some of
the interesting results tabulated from the large city schedules
mentioned at the beginning of the article. It will suffice for
our present purpose to give a table showing the bonded, floating, and gross debt, the amount of the sinking fund and the
net debt of the cities having a population of over 750o in each
of the States of the Union:
2I5