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the changes were based on the belief that the former statements had not been so absolutely correct.

Q. Do you know the amount involved in the changes?-A. I cannot state.

Q. Can you approximate to it?-A. I cannot.

Q. Were the vouchers, or warrants, as I believe you call them, and the books of the Register's office re-examined from 1833 down to 1870?— A. I am unable to state from my personal knowledge. I had nothing to do with it. I had no knowledge of it until some years after that date. Q. Were you in the office?-A. I was in the office. I was a clerk at that time in the loan division, and had no connection with this matter. By Mr. ALLISON:

Q. You did not help make up this statement?—A. No, sir.

By the CHAIRMAN:

Q. What were your duties as clerk? Were you a clerk in the ordinary sense of the word, or had you charge?-A. I had no independent charge. My duties at that time were issuing registered bonds.

Q. If an examination of the warrants and books for thirty-five years back, from 1870, had been made, would you have been likely to know it?-A. No, sir.

Q. You would not have been likely to know what was going on in the Register's office at that time?-A. No, sir.

Q. Can you state from your knowledge of the office how long and how many persons it would take to re-examine the books and warrants for thirty-five years back carefully and correct errors?-A. That would depend upon whether I suspected there was anything wrong. If I did not suspect that there was anything wrong I should take the footings from the books. That would not be a very heavy work. If I suspected that there was any erroneous entry it would be necessary to examine all the warrants, which would take very much longer. I cannot estimate the exact time or approximate time necessary to make such an examination at once. The accounts are kept by appropriations, and each warrant is entered under the head of its proper appropriation.

Q. How long would it take, and how many men, to go carefully over your books and make proper comparisons looking for errors, if there were any, for the last year?-A. I am not sufficiently familiar with the amount of time that is required for that work to give an accurate or valuable estimate, but the man immediately in charge of that can state very readily, perhaps. I have never been employed on that work, and have not such knowledge of the details as to give a satisfactory reply to the question.

Q. I understood you to say that you did not know whether or not the warrants and books were re-examined in 1870, previous to the changed statement made in 1871 ?—A. I have no knowledge on that point.

Q. Do you know where the examination, if any, took place; where the statement, in other words, came from which your office adopted in the report of 1871, the tabulated statement of the debt?-A. I do not. Q. You took charge of the office at the death of Mr. Allison ?—A. Yes, sir.

Q. Did you find in his drawer, probably called the private drawer, a letter and papers relating to the change in the public-debt statement of 1870-A. I found there the letter of the chief clerk of the department of 1870, in which he directed the Register to discontinue the statements which had been made, or to make them conform to certain statements published in the report of the Secretary on the finances for that year or the preceding year.

Q. Did you find any other paper?-A. I found no other paper relating to that subject, and, as I believe, made a careful examination of all the papers with a view to separating the official from the personal papers, and I was assisted in that work by two personal friends of the late Register, and they handed me some official papers as they discovered them, and the design was to leave everything of an official nature with me. saw no such paper, and I never have seen any such paper, to the best of my knowledge and recollection.

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Q. Have you now the papers that were handed you?—A. I have not them separately; they are undoubtedly in the office, any official papers that may have been in the Register's desk.

Q. How many were there?-A. I do not recollect now. I know there were some official papers.

Q. Have you seen among those papers, or among any papers in your office, a tabulated statement made up in 1870 by the Register showing the changes that were made in the debt statement under the order received from the Secretary?-A. No, sir.

By Mr. BECK:

Q. Ought not the annual report of the Register to be a transcript from the public ledger in his office?-A. That I doubt. If it were designed that his report should show the exact payments that were made, for instance, his books might not show it readily. We record everything by warrants, and the books would show the warrants issued; as they are issued they are recorded. The warrants that are issued during any fiscal year, and not paid until the next year, would have to be deducted. We make up the final accurate statement of receipts and expenditures, which shows just the exact amounts received and expended, from the statement of the Treasurer's accounts; that is exact and final; that is a volume published, entitled "Receipts and Expenditures;" but that cannot be made up for some considerable time after the close of the year because the accounts are not settled.

Q. Still, the question I put to you is, ought not the annual report of the Register to be a transcript from the public ledger in his office? Whether it shows an exact agreement with the Secretary or not, it purports to be from the ledger in his office, does it not, as it was at the time made out?-A. Yes, sir.

Q. Do or do not the reports so made by the Register in compliance with the requirements of the laws purport to be absolutely true, and are they not evidence of the facts stated?-A. Yes, sir.

Q. Then will you state, if you can, how the facts which enabled the Register to make the reports of 1870 and 1871 as to the public debt of the United States on June 30, 1869, could both be obtained from the same set of books?—A. I hardly feel as if I could explain that. My understanding of it, however, is that they were made upon a different basis; that the report made up for 1869 was not made upon the basis of the receipt and expenditures simply.

Q. The report of 1871 as to the debt of 1869 varied from the report of 1870 as to the debt of 1869, and was made up not by the Register from his own books, but from a statement furnished him by the Secretary, which he was directed to adopt, in order to correspond with the new mode of bookkeeping, which, it was claimed, would more correctly set forth the debt?-A. I do not understand it that way.

Q. What I want to get at is, how the Register's report of 1871, as to the debt of 1869, was made up.-A. In regard to the statement of the public debt particularly, it would differ according to the books from which it

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was made. There is so much outstanding under each loan on the first of January, and our books show it in the loan division that there have been so many four per cents. issued, for instance. If we go to our books in the receipts and expenditures division, it will not agree with that, because they are made up from the warrants covering money into the Treasury and the warrants paying out money from the Treasury, and of course they show the exact amount that has been received on account of that four per cent. loan, for example, including the thirty-first day of December. That will not be the same that we pay interest on. It will show every dollar that has been borrowed under that act up to the thirty-first day of December. Now, my understanding of it is, that those reports were changed between those two years, and instead of being stated by the amount of certificates that were outstanding under each particular loan, the statement in 1871 was made to show the amount of money that was received under each particular loan, the amount actually borrowed without reference to whether there had been any certificate of indebtedness issued or not. So that there might be a differing statement prepared in the office of the Register, according as the issue books were made the basis of the statement or the receipts and expenditures books. The amount outstanding on the books of the loan division is the amount we pay interest on at the end of the fiscal year; for instance, we may receive on the last day of the fiscal year a subscription of ten million, and that money is paid in; it is in the Treasury; it has been borrowed, but the certificates are not issued and the evidence of indebtedness is not outstanding for some weeks after that time. So it is evident that the two statements made, according to the issues and redemptions or according to the receipts and expenditures, would differ at any given day.

By Mr. ALLISON:

Q. They would differ every day, would they not?-A. Always at any time until the loan became an old one. When there had been no transactions under it for any considerable time, of course that would bring them together.

By Mr. BECK:

Q. Do you keep two sets of books relating to the public debt in the office of the Register of the Treasury, one showing the receipts and expenditures, and the other the issues and redemptions?-A. We do. Q. Explain how.-A. In separate divisions. They would show different results on any given day, dependent on the state of the accounts. Q. As stated in your previous answer?-A. They do so ordinarily. Q. You stated in answer to Mr. Davis that, the Register, when he received the order to make his subsequent statement conform to the mode suggested by the Secretary, objected to doing it so far as past years were concerned, did you not?-A. That is my understanding. It was derived from the personal statement of Mr. Allison to me.

Q. Do you know any law or authority whereby the Secretary of the Treasury may require the Register to alter any statement of his as to the debts of the United States as they existed in previous years?—A. I do not know; my attention has not been called to that before.

Q. Do you know when the Secretary of the Treasury first began to make out and keep in what is now known as the Secretary's office statements of the public debt and of receipts and expenditures of the same general character as those which the Register is required to keep ?—A. I do not recollect.

Q. Was it since you came into the Treasury Department ?—A. I do not know that fact.

By Mr. ALLISON :

Q. Who has charge now of the loan division books in your office?—A. Mr. Hartwell Jenison, chief of the division.

Q. That is the division of issues and redemptions?-A. Yes, sir.

Q. Do you know who was in charge of that division from 1869 to 1871?-A. I should have to refer to the records to see the date of Mr. Jenison's appointment. He was, I find on examination, appointed chief of that division October 1, 1869. His predecessor is dead.

Q. Are the accounts of receipts and expenditures separate accounts from the accounts of issues and redemptions?-A. Entirely. They are kept in the division of receipts and expenditures, which is a separate division.

Q. In your accounts of receipts and expenditures are all transactions relative to the receipts for loans and expenditures on account of loans kept? A. Yes, sir.

Q. Is there a separate ledger covering the public debt in the receipts and expenditures division?-A. Yes, sir.

Q. Who has charge of that division?-A. Mr. J. Hamilton Beatty. Q. How long has he had charge of it ?-A. Since December 1, 1871. Q. Who had charge of those books from 1869 to 1871?—A. Mr. D. R. B. Nevin.

Q. Who has the custody of the books in these several divisions?—A. The chiefs of the divisions.

Q. Do you keep copies of all letters written in the office of the Register?-A. Copies are kept of all letters written by the Register.

Q. I find in a printed statement a letter dated "Register's Office, December 20, 1872," signed by "John Allison, Register," addressed to the Secretary of the Treasury. Will you furnish a copy of that letter to our shorthand reporter, verified from your office?-A. Yes, sir. It will be a copy of the record of the letter. I would suggest that it would be entirely practicable to have the original produced, if it be desirable. It is undoubtedly on file in the Secretary's office.

Q. I find in this letter the Register states: "To carry out the design of your office to have the public debt stated according to the receipts and expenditures, as well as according to the loan account, it is proposed to open a set of books in this office on the basis of this report, on which, subsequent to July 1, 1871, every warrant covering receipts from loans will be credited, and every pay warrant issued in the redemption of a loan will be charged to its proper loan." Have you opened a new set of books in accordance with this suggestion of the Register?-A. I believe that proposition was never adopted or never carried out. The same plan has been pursued since that date as was pursued prior to it. Q. Will your books, as now kept, show substantially what was proposed by this new set of books?-A. Yes, sir; undoubtedly.

Q. In the letter above alluded to the Register states that he sends to the Secretary "A report on the public debt according to the receipts and expenditures, and also comparative statements showing the differences between the loan account and the receipts and expenditures account;" and he also states that in making up this report "it necessitated the re-examination of every account from 1836 to July 1, 1871.” Will you ascertain under whose direction this report was made up and furnish this report to the committee, as well as the name of the person under whose immediate charge it was made?-A. I can state now by whom that examination was made, or the person having charge of it, and who made the report. It was the then chief clerk of the Register's office, Maj. J. T. Power, who is now the chief of the warrant division in the Secretary's office.

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By the CHAIRMAN:

Q. I hand you the Finance Reports of 1870 and 1871, and call your attention to the tabulated statements made by the Register. Be kind enough to look at them both.-A. I see them.

Q. These are the tabulated statements made by the Register for 1870 and 1871?-A. They are.

Q. Do they agree in figures?-A. I see that for the year 1870 they do not agree.

Q. What difference is there?-A. Some $96,000,000 difference.

Q. Are there any other years for which they do not agree?—A. They do not agree for 1869.

Q. What is the difference there, in round numbers?-A. One hundred million dollars.

Q. Follow it on further.-A. For 1868 there appears to be a difference of about $25,000,000.

Q. State which is the largest in amount, the 1870 or 1871 statement?A. The 1871 statement.

Q. You have stated three years; one amounting to $90,000,000, another to nearly $100,000,000, another to nearly $25,000,000. Are there not other years where the amounts do not agree in these two reports?— A. Yes, sir; the years immediately preceding those years.

Q. How far back do the tables in the two reports differ?—A. Without examining each item, I see that a difference occurs in 1833. That is apparently the first year.

Q. And there are more or less differences from 1833 down to 1870, according to these reports?-A. Yes, sir.

Q. Were both these reports made in the office of the Register?—A. Undoubtedly they were.

Q. Can you state whether or not the report of 1871 was made in pursuance of instructions from the office of the Secretary of the Treasury under the letter referred to by yourself and Judge Scofield?—A. I believe that to have been the case, or I had better say that I believe that the report for 1871 was made in accordance with the instructions of the chief clerk to show the correct amount of the public debt. My understanding is that there was an error made before.

Q. The question was whether or not, of the two different statements before you, one was made under instructions from the office of the Secretary of the Treasury, and whether or not that was the cause of the changes?-A. I really do not know.

Q. Senator Allison has referred to a pamphlet dated "Register's office, December 20, 1872." Will you tell us whether or not the two reports that you have there were made previous to the getting up of that document which I now hand you, and, if so, how long?-A. They undoubtedly were made before, and the later one was made about a year before, probably. The preparation of this report was commenced shortly after the report of 1871 was made.

Q. Then I understand that the two reports to Congress which show different amounts of the public debt were made, the last one a year previous to the pamphlet of which Senator Allison has spoken ?—A. I conclude so from the dates.

Q. Now turn to pages 28 to 31 of that pamphlet; is there there a statement made up from the loans of the public debt on those three pages?—

A. There is.

Q. Will you turn to the years you have just told us of-take 1870– and state whether or not this pamphlet agrees in the amounts with either of the two reports as to the total indebtedness?—A. I see that they do not agree.

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