SECOND BIENNIAL MESSAGE OF HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR C. C. STEVENSON, TO THE LECISLATURE, FOURTEENTH SESSION. 1-A GOVERNOR'S MESSAGE. STATE OF NEVADA, EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, Gentlemen of the Legislature: Two years more, with their events of good and evil, have passed to the keeping of history, and this efflux of time has brought the period when, under constitutional provision, you, as the law making department of the State Government, are assembled and organized for discharge of your exalted duties. To some extent it is devolved upon the Chief Executive officer of the State to take part in the making of the laws necessary for the carrying on of the government, and the prosperity and happiness of the people. Therefore, during your session our intercourse must, of necessity, be close and constant; let us all endeavor to make it most pleasant and profitable. At the threshold of these grave obligations it is becoming that we reverently acknowledge the beneficence of Providence to us during the last two years; for though our material prosperity has not been as great as we have desired, and as under former conditions it would have been, still we have been highly favored in our comparative freedom from disease, and in that we have not been visited by pestilence, nor by those desolating, sudden operations of natural forces, which have in many other States spread death and destruction in their pathway. The fields of our husbandmen have responded well to their toil, and the stalls of our herdsmen have not been depleted by those ravenous diseases which have made such devastation elsewhere. Labor has been better rewarded than in almost any other part of the Union. Our mines still send forth the money metals in ready obedience to the combined bidding of labor and capital. And we are greatly encouraged in view of the future by the fact that there is reasonable probability that silver will, at an early day, be fully remonetized, allowed free coinage, and assume its rightful place side by side and hand in hand with gold in the metallic circulating medium of the Union; and the United States Mint in our State be reopened for coinage, thereby becoming again a medium of convenience to bullion producers and a source of revenue to the General Government. If these things shall come to pass, attended by the inauguration of a wise and economic system of impounding the waters which now run to waste in the State and applying them to the purposes of judicious irrigation and motive power, we may reasonably congratulate ourselves upon the near approach of a season of prosperity unprecedented in our history. To aid in bringing about such results wise and sound legislation is needed, which you are expected to attend to, and doubtless are willing to give to it your undivided attention and best energies, as well as to sanction and encourage the action of Congress, recently inaugurated, upon the question of water storage and irrigation. I congratulate you upon the auspices attending your coming together, and assure you that all I can do shall be done to render our intercourse mutually satisfactory, and our action an honor to ourselves, a lasting benefit to our Commonwealth. STATE FINANCES. It is proper that I call your attention first to the financial transactions of the State during the last two fiscal years, and to its condition in that respect. The total debt of the State, December 31, 1886, was $143,244 11. To meet this there was then in the treasury $226,732 65, which extinguished this debt and left a balance of $83,488 54; but this indebtedness does not include the indebtedness of the late Territory of Nevada, assumed by the State, as set forth in the Constitution. That is now in the shape of a bond, given by the State to its Irreducible School Fund, for the sum of $380,000, bearing 5 per cent. per annum interest. On December 31, 1887, the debt was $182,077 56, and there was then in the treasury $199,309 57, which extinguished this debt and left a balance of $17,232 01 above all indebtedness exclusive of the above-named Irredeemable School Fund bond. On December 31, 1888 the debt was as follows: Four per cent. Insane Asylum Bonds of October, 1881......... Accrued interest...... Outstanding warrants. Deficiency claims....... Total debt, exclusive as above........... Cash in treasury to meet debt.......... Balance....... .... $44,000 00 68,000 00 22,000 00 12,180 00 9.631 00 20,003 37 $175,815 10 270,943 87 $95,128 77 The balance on hand December 31, 1888, is distributed, cash and bonds, as follows: From the foregoing figures it is apparent that on December 31, 1886, the State debt, exclusive of the Territorial debt, then in the shape of a State bond for $380,000 payable to the Irreducible School Fund, was $143,244 11; but that the cash then on hand and applicable to its payment extinguished the debt and left still cash on hand $83,488 54. That on December 31, 1887, the State debt, exclusive as aforesaid, was $182,077 56; but that the cash then on hand and applicable to its |