During the year 1872, in addition to all this, there came to the knowledge of Congress and of the people of the North the frightful and scandalous corruption of the "State" governments in the South. It is very difficult to get at distinct and reliable facts upon a subject which officials undertake to cover up and keep shrouded in darkness. {262} But the record of these doings in South Carolina was something as follows. The House of Representatives, the majority of the members of which were negroes, and the presiding officer of which was the notorious F. J. Moses, spent ninety-five thousand dollars to refurnish its assembly hall, where the aristocrats of South Carolina had never spent over five thousand. Clocks costing six hundred dollars each, sofas two hundred dollars each, chairs at sixty dollars each, desks at a hundred and twenty-five dollars each, mirrors at six hundred dollars each, cuspidors at eight dollars each--such were the items of the bill. In the four years from 1868 to 1872, two hundred thousand dollars were expended for furniture for the legislative chambers alone. Then came the bills of supplies, sundries and incidentals, amounting in one session to three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, one hundred and twenty-five thousand of it for a free restaurant, lunch counter and bar, at which the members and their friends fared most royally, eating, drinking and smoking, and paying not a penny therefor directly, nor indirectly, since many, if not most, of the members of that legislature paid no stiver of the taxes. Then came the printing bills, averaging more than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year where ten thousand dollars would have been more than enough to pay every legitimate expense of that kind. Then came the sale of franchises of all kinds, and the pledging of the credit of the "State" in the form of bonds to aid all sorts of enterprises pretended to be set on foot, or promoted as is now said, by combinations of legislators or officials or their friends. In 1868 the "State" debt was about five millions of dollars, with almost enough assets to pay it. In 1872 the assets had disappeared and the debt was more than eighteen {263} millions, and nothing worth mentioning to show for it. And all this when the "State" taxes had been raised from less than a half million of dollars a year on a valuation of over four hundred millions to two millions of dollars a year on a valuation of less than two hundred millions of property. [Sidenote: In Louisiana.]