Journal of Social Science (Volume 19) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. THE FINANCIAL STANDING OF STATES. BY PROF. HENRY C. ADAMS, OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY. (Read Wednesday, September 9, 1884.) One of the most curious chapters in the history of American financiering pertains to the second period of State indebtedness. This period covers the )'ears from 1830 to 1850, and receives its peculiar character from the fact that States undertook financial operations of a business nature. It is not, however, mere curiosity that leads one to study this chapter of local financial control, for it is full of pertinent suggestions, and is capable of throwing somewhat unaccustomed lights upon certain questions of current interest. My plan of treatment, in the present paper, is not at all ambitious, since it extends no farther than an orderly statement of the general facts, together with an explanation of the relations in which they stand to each other. In this manner, it is believed, the true meaning of the period will stand forth, for facts orderly arranged will the best interpret themselves. After the assumption by the Federal government of those local obligations incurred during the progress of the Revolutionary war, the States as political sovereignties, made no extensive use of public credit previous to 1820; nor was it until some twelve or fifteen years later that they appealed lavishly to this source of revenue. How lavishly this appeal came finally to be, appears from the figures which show the growth of local debts. During the ten years following 1820, public stocks were authorized in the various States to the amount of twenty-six millions of dollars, of which nearly eighteen millions were held against the three States, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Between the years 1830 and 1835, forty millions more were added to the obligations of the Sta...