The enormous strides with which we paid off our war debt amazed the world. The debt had reached its highest point in August, 1865. At that date the figure was $2,844,649,626, or, for the interest-bearing part alone, $2,381,530,294, The total interest-bearing debt on April 30, 1888, was only $1,038,199,762. At the end of that fiscal year, June 30, 1888, the debt, less cash in the treasury, amounted to $1,165,584,656. Its items at this time were $222,207,050 in bonds at 4-1/2 per cent., payable in 1891; $714,315,450 in four per cent. bonds, payable in 1907; four per cent. refunding certificates amounting to $141,300; the three per cent. navy pension fund of $14,000,000, and the Pacific Railway six per cent. bonds, $64,623,512. Thus on June 30,1888, more than half of the largest total had been paid off, and the net debt, aside from the Pacific Railway bonds, which that corporation was to pay, having fallen to below a billion. The reduction proceeded for the entire twenty-three years between the first and last dates named, at an average rate of $62,906,975 yearly, or $5,225,581 each month, $174,186 each day, $7,258 each hour, and $120.47 each minute. The interest-bearing legal tender notes were first paid off. Greenbacks, or non interest-bearing legal tenders were still, October 1, 1894, outstanding to the amount of $346,681,000; yet this division of the debt, too, had been vastly reduced, having stood at $433,160,569 on August 31, 1865. To the bonded obligations of the country the policy of refunding was early applied, bonds of high rates being called in so soon as callable, and replaced by others bearing lower rates. The income of the Government was so immense that it proved unfortunate to have set so late a date as 1891 for the time at which the 4-1/2's could be paid off. To fix the date of maturity for the 4's in 1907 was, of course, worse still. The three per cents. of 1882, which supplanted earlier issues, were fortunately made payable at the Government's option, and on May 20, 1887, the Secretary of the Treasury issued a call for the last of them, amounting to $19,717,500, interest to cease with the first of the next July.