the reserve was steadily decreased until, on February 8, 1895, a third sale of $62,315,400 in bonds, for $65,116,244, was announced to Congress.
The receipts of the Government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1895, were $390,373,203.30 and the expenditures $433,178,426.48, showing a deficit of $42,805,223.18. A further loan of $100,000,000 was negotiated by the Government in February, 1896, the sale netting $111,166,246, and swelling the aggregate of bonds issued within three years to $262,315,400. For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1896, the revenues of the Government from all sources amounted to $409,475,408.78, while its expenditures were $434,678,654.48, or an excess of expenditures over receipts of $25,203,245.70. In other words, the total receipts for the three fiscal years ending June 30, 1896, were insufficient by $137,811,729.46 to meet the total expenditures.
Nor has this condition since improved. For the first half of the present fiscal year, the receipts of the Government, exclusive of postal revenues, were $157,507,603.76, and its expenditures, exclusive of postal service, $195,410,000.22, or an excess of expenditures over receipts of $37,902,396.46. In January of this year, the receipts, exclusive of postal revenues, were $24,316,994.05, and the expenditures, exclusive of postal service, $30,269,389.29, a deficit of $5,952,395.24 for the month. In February of this year, the receipts, exclusive of postal revenues, were $24,400,997.38, and expenditures, exclusive of postal service, $28,796,056.66, a deficit of $4,395,059.28; or a total deficiency of $186,061,580.44 for the three years and eight months ending March 1, 1897. Not only are we without a surplus in the Treasury, but with an increase in the public debt there has been a corresponding increase in the annual interest charge, from $22,893,883.20 in 1892, the lowest of any year since 1862, to $34,387,297.60 in 1896, or an increase of $11,493,414.40.
It may be urged that even if the revenues of the Government had been sufficient to meet all its ordinary expenses during the past three years, the gold reserve would still have been insufficient to meet the demands upon it, and that bonds would necessarily have been issued for its repletion. Be this as it may, it is clearly manifest, without denying or affirming the correctness of such a conclusion, that the debt would have been decreased in at least the amount of the deficiency, and business confidence immeasurably strengthened throughout the country.
Congress should promptly correct the existing condition. Ample revenues must be supplied not only for the ordinary expenses of the Government, but for the prompt payment of liberal pensions and the liquidation of the principal and interest of the public debt. In raising revenue, duties should be so levied upon foreign products as to preserve the home market, so far as possible, to our own producers; to revive and increase manufactures; to relieve and encourage agriculture; to increase our domestic and foreign commerce; to aid and develop mining and building; and to render to labor in every field of useful occupation the liberal wages and adequate rewards to which skill and industry are justly entitled. The necessity of the passage of a tariff law which shall provide ample revenue, need not be further urged. The imperative demand of the hour is the prompt enactment of such a measure, and to this object I earnestly recommend that Congress shall make every endeavor. Before other business is transacted, let us first provide sufficient revenue to faithfully administer the Government without the contracting of further debt, or the continued disturbance of our finances.
WILLIAM McKINLEY.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, April 7, 1897.
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
Information which has recently come to me from the governors of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and from prominent citizens of these States and Tennessee, warrants the conclusion that widespread distress, involving the destruction of a large amount of property and loss of human life, has resulted from the floods which have submerged that section of the country. These are stated, on reliable authority, to be the most destructive floods that have ever devastated the Mississippi Valley, the water being much higher than the highest stage it has reached before. From Marion, Ark., north of Memphis, to Greenville, Miss., a distance of more than 250 miles by river, it is reported there are now at least fifty towns and villages under water, and a territory extending from 100 miles north of Memphis to 200 miles south, and from 5 to 40 miles wide, is submerged. Hundreds of thousands of acres of cultivated soil, with growing crops, are included in the submerged territory. In this section alone there are from 50,000 to 60,000 people whose property has been destroyed and whose business has been suspended. Growing crops have been ruined, thousands of cattle have been drowned, and the inhabitants of certain areas threatened with starvation. As a great majority of the sufferers are small farmers, they have thus been left entirely destitute, and will be unprepared for work even after the floods have subsided.
The entire Mississippi Valley in Arkansas is flooded and communication with many points cut off. In Mississippi a like condition exists. The levees in Louisiana, with a single exception, have held; but the water is rising and the situation there is reported as being extremely critical.
Under such circumstances the citizens of these States look for the co-operation and support of the National Government in relieving the pressing cases of destitution for food, clothing, and shelter, which are beyond the reach of local efforts. The authorities who have communicated with the Executive recognize that their first and most energetic duty is to provide as far as possible the means of caring for their own citizens; but nearly all of them agree in the opinion that after their resources have been exhausted a sum aggregating at least $150,000 and possibly $200,000 will be required for immediate use.
Precedents are not wanting that in such emergencies as this Congress has taken prompt, generous, and intelligent action, involving the expenditure of considerable sums of money, with satisfactory results. In 1874 $590,000 was appropriated, and in 1882 $350,000 was also appropriated for relief in same direction, besides large sums in other years.
The citizens' relief committee of Memphis has taken prompt action, has already cared for from 6,000 to 7,000 refugees from the flooded districts, and they are still arriving in that city in large numbers daily. Supplies and provisions have been sent to the various points in Arkansas and Mississippi by this committee, but the utmost that can be done by these efforts is to partly relieve the most acute cases of suffering. No action has yet been taken for the great majority of the inhabitants living in the interior, whose condition has already been described.
Under these conditions and having exerted themselves to the fullest extent, the local authorities have reluctantly confessed their inability to further cope with this distressing situation unaided by relief from the Government. It has therefore seemed to me that the representatives of the people should be promptly informed of the nature and extent of the suffering and needs of these stricken people, and I have communicated these facts in the hope and belief that the legislative branch of the Government will promptly re-enforce the work of the local authorities in the States named.
WILLIAM McKINLEY.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, April 14, 1897.
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
I transmit herewith for the consideration of the respective Houses of the Congress, a report of the Secretary of State representing the appropriateness of early action in order that the Government of the United States may be enabled to accept the invitation of that of the French Republic to participate in the Universal Exposition to be held at Paris in 1900.
The recommendations of this report have my most cordial approval, and I urge upon the Congress such timely provision for this great international enterprise as will fittingly respond to the widely testified wish and expectation of our inventors and producers that they may have adequate opportunity again, as in the past, to fortify the important positions that have won in the world's competitive fields of discovery and industry. Nor are the traditional friendships of the United States and France and the mutual advantages to accrue from their enlarged
