“When installed in power the negroes and their white mentors indulged in an unprecedented robbery of the public purse. They made the legislatures issue bonds on the state to provide for public works which were never taken in hand, and shared the proceeds among themselves, leaving the taxpayers to submit to fresh taxation; they openly passed fraudulent disbursements or swelled the expenses incurred for furnishing offices, etc., in the wildest fashion, fitting them up, for instance, with clocks at $480 apiece, with chandeliers at $650. The official positions were distributed among illiterates; in one state there were more than two hundred negro magistrates unable to read or write; justice was openly bought and sold.” (_Ostrogorski on Democracy_, p. 56.) A few of the details are as follows: In Mississippi the yearly expenditures trebled; the state debt was greatly increased, the actual figures have been disputed; the tax levy was multiplied by fourteen. In 1866 the State Treasurer embezzled $61,962. The state librarian is believed to have stolen books from the state library. In South Carolina upon the inauguration of manhood suffrage, there followed, says the Encyclopedia Britannica, “an orgy of crime and corruption.” A bar and restaurant was annexed to the legislative chambers, free to the members and their friends; in place of the plain furniture placed there by the South Carolina aristocracy, consisting of $5 clocks and $10 benches, there were installed by the representatives of the working people of the state sofas at $200 each on which the black and white legislators might loll and repose, and clocks at $600 each, for those capable of reading time. In one session $95,000 and in four years $200,000 was appropriated for State House furniture. When the orgy was over a few years later, the whole lot was valued at less than $18,000. In eight years the printing ring stole or squandered over $150,000 of state money. Enormous sums were obtained by means of fraudulent pay certificates issued under legislative authority. In the four years from 1868 to 1872 the state debt increased from less than $7,000.000 to an unknown sum, of which over $18,000,000 was actual and evidenced by written obligations, to which might be added about $10,000,000 more, clearly fraudulent and contingent on the continuance in power of the plunderers. It may be said that all of this increase beyond the original $7,000,000 represented waste and theft. A large part of this debt was afterwards repudiated. In Florida $600,000 in taxes was collected and embezzled by the collectors and the treasury was swept absolutely bare. Legislative expenses were quadrupled, state taxes increased eight-fold; in the four years from 1868 to 1872 the state debt mounted from $4,000,000 to $12,000,000. In Tennessee the state debt rose from $16,000,000 to $42,000,000. In Arkansas land taxes were increased ten-fold and state expenses