, 52,080
Salaries, 72,624
City council, 52,925
[Footnote 1: Finance Statistics of the American Commonwealths: E.E.
Seligman. Publications of Am. Statistical Asso., Dec., 1889.]
[Footnote 2: R.T. Ely, _Taxation in Am. States and Cities_.]
Nearly all of our State and local governments, as well as the national
government, have contracted large public debts, the interest payments
upon which constitute one of the chief items in their lists of
expenditures. The present debt of the Federal Government is largely the
result of the enormous expenditures occasioned by the Civil War. In
1865, August 31, it reached its highest point $2,381,530,294, with an
annual interest charge of $150,977,697. Since then it has been steadily
reduced until in 1889 the total interest-bearing debt was but
$829,853,990, with an annual interest charge of $33,752,354. The
principal of the national debt is mainly in the form of interest-bearing
bonds held by the National banks and private individuals. These bonds
are of various denominations and are promises of the government to pay
the sums named on their face, at the expiration of a certain period. The
bonds at present unpaid, and as such constituting the major portion of
our national debt, are principally of two kinds; those bearing four and
one-half per cent, annual interest and falling due in 1891, and those
bearing four per cent, interest and falling due in 1907.
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