A Treasury surplus of about $97,000,000 (in October, 1888) tempted the Fifty-first Congress to expenditures then deemed vast, though often surpassed since. The Fifty-first became known as the "Billion Dollar Congress." What drew most heavily upon the national strong-box was the Dependent Pensions Act. In this culminated a course of legislation repeating with similar results that which began early in the history of our country, occasioning the adage that "The Revolutionary claimant never dies." By 1820 the experiment entailed an expenditure of a little over twenty-five cents per capita of our population. In 1880 Congress was induced to endow each pensioner with a back pension equal to what his pension would have been had he applied on the date of receiving his injury. Under the old law pension outlay had been at high tide in 1871, standing then at $34,443,894. Seven years later it shrank to $27,137,019. In 1883 it exceeded $66,000,000; in 1889 it approached $88,000,000. But the act of 1890, similar to one vetoed by President Cleveland three years before, carried the pension figure to $106,493,000 in 1890, to $118,584,000 in 1891, and to about $159,000,000 in 1893. It offered pensions to all soldiers and sailors incapacitated for manual labor who had served the Union ninety days, or, if they were dead, to their widows, children, or dependent parents. 311,567 pension certificates were issued during the fiscal year 1891-1892. While thus increasing outgo, the Fifty-first Congress planned to diminish income, not by lowering tariff rates, as the last Administration had recommended, but by pushing them up to or toward the prohibitive point. The McKinley Act, passed October 1, 1890, made sugar, a lucrative revenue article, free, and gave a bounty to sugar producers in this country, together with a discriminating duty of one-tenth of a cent per pound on sugar imported hither from countries which paid an export bounty thereon. The "Blaine" reciprocity feature of this act proved its most popular grace. In 1891 we entered into reciprocity agreements with Brazil, with the Dominican Republic, and with Spain for Cuba and Porto Rico. In 1892 we covenanted similarly with the United Kingdom on behalf of the British West Indies and British Guiana, and with Nicaragua, Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Austria-Hungary. How far our trade was thus benefited is matter of controversy. Imports from these countries were certainly much enlarged. Our exportation of flour to these lands increased a result commonly ascribed to reciprocity, though the simultaneous increase in the amounts of flour we sent to other countries was a third more rapid.