HEAVIEST TAXES SINCE 1875

The Cortland Democrat, Friday, May 31, 1889.

Heaviest Taxes Since 1875.

(From the Albany Argus.)

   The taxes imposed by the Legislature this year are the heaviest laid upon the people of the State since 1875, when the bounty debt incurred to meet the expenses of the war was virtually extinguished. We believe there is no satisfactory and creditable explanation for this. We believe that the careless, extravagant temper of the Republican majority in the Legislature is responsible for high taxes.

   The Republican party has just bought its way into power in the Nation, when it despaired of its inability to win, and it has been made reckless by its unexpected success. In the Nation it has set out to increase taxes on the necessaries of life; and in this State it believes it can pile up taxes with equal impunity.

   Here is the rate of State taxation for the last fourteen years, and the amount of taxes raised each year to pay the State expenses ordered by the Legislature. Men may explain the facts as best they can. The facts stick out and they will abide.

Year.        Rate.       Total Taxes.

1876         3 11/24    $8,534,284.

1877         3 1/16        8,726,511.

1878         2.9             7,941,298.

1879         2.863         7,690,416.

1880         3.5             9,232,542.

1881         2.25           6,032,830.

1882         2.45           6,820,022.

1883         3.25           9,334,836.

1884         2.575         7,762,573.

1885         2.96           9,160,405.

1886         2.95           9,512,813.

1887         2.70           9,075,046.

1888         2.62           9,089,304.

1889         3.52         12,558,559.

   Republican "explanations" and "defenses" will begin to-day, and will be kept up until November.

PAGE TWO/EDITORIALS.

   Thus far, the present administration has accomplished absolutely nothing that will benefit the country. It has given its best and only efforts towards benefiting the Republican party.

   The editor of the Cortland Standard calls Governor Hill a "political Ethiopian." This to a very elegant expression for the elegantly refined editor to use, but it reminds us of the old saw, "pot calling kettle black." Moravia Register.

   Andrew Carnegie's men, it is stated, have consented to go to work at a reduction of twenty five per cent in wages all around. This scale is to hold good for three years. At the end of that time Carnegie will turn up again as an advocate of "protection to labor," and will tell his men that if the Democratic candidates are elected, wages will be reduced.— Albany Argus.

   The owner of the Bristol woolen mills in Pennsylvania in October paraded in Republican newspapers the statement that if President Cleveland were re-elected he would sell out the mills for twenty-five per cent of their cost. If President Cleveland had been re-elected, this proprietor would have been just fifteen per cent better off than he is under President Harrison, for the mills went into bankruptcy last week, and were sold for only ten per cent of their cost. "Students of the markets," please notice.—Albany Argus.

   If it is necessary to keep a tariff of fifteen cents per bushel on potatoes, to prevent people in the Old World from raising potatoes for almost nothing by employing the pauper labor of Europe, and shipping them here for ballast, what is to hinder some republican produce dealer from purchasing several million bushels of the surplus crop now in the hands of American farmers and shipping them as ballast to Europe? There is no tariff on potatoes in England and there would undoubtedly be millions in it for the enterprising produce dealer. If potatoes could be landed in London for fifteen cents per bushel, with no tariff to pay, the speculator who ships them over there as ballast would make his fortune in two months time.

Filling in the Roads with Potatoes.

   A. T. Parsons, of North Lansing, was in the Journal office yesterday, and stated that potatoes were of little value in his township, which is considered the potato patch of the county. He said that fronting the residence of Henry Teeter, who had 24 acres in potatoes last year, and scattered for rods along the middle of the road lay 300 or 400 bushels of large, handsome, perfect potatoes—thrown away.

   Upon being asked if they would not have paid cartage to town, Mr. Parsons said: "If any one in Ithaca would purchase them at any price it would be one not exceeding ten cents a bushel. And it is doubtful if any one would buy them, as every one seems over supplied. Thirty or forty bushels could be hauled at a load; but farm teams are now imperatively needed in spring work. The value of potatoes as food for stock is questionable; and they possess no merit as a fertilizer. They commanded 30 cents last fall; but too many were held for a higher market in the spring."—Ithaca Journal.

Nicaragua Canal.

   NEW YORK, May 24.—The steamship Alvena, to sail hence for Nicaragua May 20th, will carry 50 men and a large quantity of implements and stores for the Nicaragua Canal Construction company, being the pioneer expedition for the commencement of the work of building the Nicaragua Inter-oceanic canal. Other expeditions will follow at short intervals. The engineers of the surveying expedition who have remained in Nicaragua have collected 500 native laborers in readiness to begin operations at once. The first work will include the construction of a pier, a railroad, shops, warehouses and other buildings, dredging Greytown harbor and clearing and dredging the first 13 miles of the canal from Greytown to the divide.

Wanted to Frighten His Wife.

   WATERTOWN, N. Y., May 27.—Cornelius Donnelly was found by his wife yesterday, with a rope around his neck and in the last struggles of strangulation. Donnelly had been married only 4 months and it has developed that he did not intend to commit suicide, but only wanted to frighten his wife into giving him possession of her property, amounting to $16,000. On a previous occasion he had pretended to hang himself and also to cut his throat, and when he tried it again yesterday his wife was not so prompt in rescuing him, as on the former occasions, and when she did arrive he was past saving.

Republican Endorsements.

   Gov. Hill's veto of the Saxton ballot reform bill is pretty generally sustained by the Democratic press and we notice that several republican papers have been commending the act. The Watertown Times, a leading republican paper, edited by Hon. Beman Brockway, who was private secretary to Gov. Fenton and who was appointed Canal Appraiser in 1865, says the Governor's reasons for vetoing the bill are strong ones. The Times says:

   The full text of Gov. Hill's message vetoing the Saxton ballot reform bill puts the Governor in a somewhat better light than the synopsis given yesterday, and if one could have any confidence in the sincerity of the Governor's statements that he is heartily in favor of ballot reform and only objects to the method proposed; that he does not veto the spirit of the bill, but the provisions by which it is manifested, then one could say that the Governor gives some very strong reasons for a veto.

   For it is a fact that the Saxton bill provided a very cumbersome way of reaching the matter of suppressing bribery. Eager that some method be adopted to check this growing evil, this paper has urged its passage, but has from the first insisted that a plain and practicable bill providing for the printing at public expense of the present form of ballot, and a secret room for the voter to pass through to the ballot-box, was all that was necessary.

   As Gov. Hill declares that such are his views also we cannot well criticize them, although we suspect that had such a bill been presented him he would have found reasons for vetoing that. He is now, however, committed in favor of such a law, and the best thing the Legislature could do would be to send it to him, even if it has to extend the session a few days in order to frame and pass it.

   The Poughkeepsie Eagle, edited by John I. Platt, who was one of the Republican leaders in the Assembly in 1886 and last year, and who supported the Saxton bill, also sustains Gov. Hill's veto in the strongest possible language. The Eagle says:

   The Republican party in the State of New York owes Gov. Hill a vote of thanks for his refusal to permit the bill known as the "Saxton Ballot Reform bill" to become a law. We do not believe that the Governor should make use of his veto power to force the majority in the Legislature to shape legislation in accordance with his views, and some of Gov. Hill's acts in this line have in our opinion gone to the verge of usurpation, but not in this case. It is clearly his duty to forbid pernicious legislation, and if there was ever a bill which deserves a veto it was this one.

   The Governor is right in all respects, and as we have stated, no party owes him so much for his manly interference as the Republican party. We feared lest he might bow to the demands that came to him from so many quarters, and while refusing his approval, also decline to take any action, and leave the responsibility of the bill upon those who passed it. Had he done so, the storm of indignation that would have followed an attempt to put the law in practical operation, would have swept the party that passed it out of power for a generation.

   We do not mean to be understood as condemning the Saxton bill in all particulars. There are many excellent provisions in it, but the one thing which its promoters have insisted on as "the essential feature of the reform"—the requirement that ballots shall be furnished by official agency, and that no others shall be used, is such egregious folly that we have been utterly at a loss ever since we first heard of it, to imagine why it was proposed. We have never yet seen anybody who could give any reason for it, nor have we ever read any explanation of how or why it was supposed to be beneficial. Its advocates are content with the parrot like repetition of the statement that it is "the essential feature of the reform," and seem to think that that ought to silence all opposition.

   We do not often so radically disagree with our party, but in this [Dem.] Gov. Hill is right, and the Republican majority is wrong. We hope there will be a genuine reform measure passed some time, but far better none at all than such a one as this. There will no doubt be a good deal of fuss made, and a great deal of abuse heaped on Gov. Hill, but the common sense of the people will sustain the veto.

FROM EVERYWHERE.

   The railroads are not making money.

   There are 960 saloons in Albany, N. Y.

   Iron freight cars are coming into general use.

   There are two eases of leprosy in New York city.

   The Chicago anarchists are showing unusual activity.

   Many horses in the vicinity of Manlius are afflicted with the epizootic.

   We have five mints: at Philadelphia, New Orleans, San Francisco, Denver and Carson City. The first three are still coining. Coins struck at Philadelphia are not marked. "S." stands for the San Francisco mint, "C." for the New Orleans mint, "C. C." for the Carson City mint.

   A week ago last Monday the contractors turned over as finished Crouse Memorial College, donated to Syracuse University by John Crouse, the wealthy retired merchant of that city. The completed building cost $300,000. Architecturally it is said to be unsurpassed for grace and beauty.

   Henry W. Sage intends to give $300,000 to Cornell University for a library. If the university loses the $1,500,000 involved in the pending McGraw-Fiske litigation, Mr. Sage will also give $200,000 for the library building. This will make his total gifts to the institution about $1,000,000.

   An Auburn dispatch says Kemmler, the Buffalo murderer, who is to be killed by electricity in prison next month, has now had three days of confinement and keeps his nerves well. He was at first served with meals from the wardens table, but now gets the food that is furnished in the hospital. His appetite is good and he has recovered from the nervousness he displayed on the night of his arrival. He is locked up in a steel cell and has no opportunity of talking to any person save his watchers.

   Dr. Poucher, the veterinary surgeon, took a calculus the size of a goose egg from the stomach of a $500 horse belonging to Mr. Foster, a Volney farmer, last Thursday. The calculus is a hard, circular substance about the size of a goose egg and when sawn into to-day, exhibited a small piece of iron, probably from a nail, about which it had formed in successive layers. The horse is doing well, and the operation is regarded as one of the finest in horse surgery ever performed.—Oswego Palladium.

   A new company proposes to put twelve mammoth steel steamers into the water of the lakes as fast as they can be built. The boats will be constructed at Sandusky and will cost $325,000 each. They will be 325 feet long each, with a carrying capacity of 3,500 tons. They will be named after States, the six Eastern States being the names of the freight boats, and the six Western ones being the passenger craft. This line will be called the States-Anchor line, and the capital is said to be $12,000,000. Prominent railroad men, principally of the Pennsylvania system, are the projectors of the line, which, when completed will be by far the most complete on the chain of lakes.