_PUCK, December 7th, 1887._
There is a marvelous pregnancy of significance in this cartoon; as we
can not but see when we think that, at the re-assembling of Congress
in December, 1887, one of the first questions it had to confront was
the question of the Surplus. The revenues of the government, especially
those coming from customs duties, were so vast that an enormous,
useless, cumbersome and dangerous surplus was steadily piling itself
up in the United States Treasury. It was the expectation of the people
that Congress would pass laws reducing the customs duties. But the
only tariff legislation made by Congress between that date and the
appearance of this book has tended to increase rather than to lower
these duties. And yet, as these pages go to press, the latest report of
the Secretary of the Treasury announces that this surplus is so nearly
wiped out that, unless the new administration takes measures to the
contrary, there will be a deficit within a year. This is a curious,
definitive accounting of a four years’ test of a peculiar latter-day
theory of political economy. It is not wonderful that a practical
people insisted on the abandonment of the experiment.
[Illustration]