Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1886 — WASHINGTON. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON.

The bill introduced in the Senate last week by Senator Plumb, to forfeit certain land grants, provides that all lands heretofore granted to any State or to any corporation to aid in the construction of a railroad opposite to and coterminal with the uncompleted portion of any railroad for the construction or benefit of which lands have heretofore been granted bo forfeited, and that such lands be declared part of the public domain. Rights of way and depot grounds are exempted from the provisions of tho bill The House Committee on Public Lands has adopted the following resolution; “Resolved, That the bill to be reported by the committee touching the California and Oregon and the Oregon and California Railroads grants embrace a forfeiture of all lands not conveyed by patent to either of the said companies by July 1, 1889.” At a meeting of the House Coinage Committee, at which all the members were present, a proposition to report adversely a bill to suspend coinage of silver was voted down by 7 to 6. Mr. Findlay of Maryland has been given the place on the House Committee on Banking and Currency which Mr. Curtin declined to accept The Woman-Suffrage National Convention, in session at Washington last week, adopted resolutions reaffirming confidence in the national method of securing the ballot to women through an amendment to the Federal Constitution; calling on Congress to submit to the States at once the question of the right of women to vote; protesting against the admission to the Union of any Territory where the elective franchise is denied to women; declaring the National Woman-Suffrage Association to be non-partisan in politics, and protesting against the passage in its present shape of the bill now pending in Congress to suppress polygamy as discriminating unjustly against gentile and non-polygamous Mormon women for crimes never committed by them. The House Committee on Postofficea and Post Roads unanimously agreed to report adversely all bills before it for tho purchase or construction of telegraph linos by the Government Secretary Manning has issued his third call for $10,000,000 of 3 per cent bonds, the principal and accrued interest to be paid April 1. Major Williams, a special agent of the Treasury, reports that nearly all imported books are undervalued more than 50 per cent He recommends that duties bo assessed on tho average retail price, and that stereotype plates be treated as originals.