Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1887 — WORK OF CONGRESS. [ARTICLE]

WORK OF CONGRESS.

Summary of Measures that Have Become Laws or Been Defeated. The Number of Bills, Resolutions, Etc-, Introduced in Both Houses. [Washington special.] The total number of laws enacted by tRe Forty-ninth Congress was, approximately, 1,431, of which 1,093 originated in the House and 338 in the Senate. Two hundred and sixty-four of these became laws by the expiration of the constitutional ten days limitation. Fifty bills failed to become laws, owing to the adjournment of Congress, nine of them at the close of the first session. There were 132 bills vetoed by the President, or twenty-one more than had been vetoed from the foundation of the Government down to the beginning of this Congress. Of the vetoed bills ninety-four originated in the House and thirty-nine in the Senate. But one private bill, that granting a pension to Joseph Bomeiser, and one public bill for the erection of a Government buildlug at Dayton, Ohio, succeeded in passing both houses over the Presi- j dent’s veto, although several others obtained I the requisite two-thirds vote in the Senate, only j to fail in the House. Of the 1,053 House hills which became laws, j 275 were of a more or less public nature. Of the I remaining 778 bills (granting pensions or relief to specially designated persons), 150 became laws without the approval of the President. The following is a list of more important House bills which have become laws : To forfeit the Atlantic & Pacific Kallroad land grant; to increase the pensions of widows and dependent relatives from $8 to Sl2 per month; the Dingley shipping hill; to require the Pacific roads to pay the cost of surveying and conveying their land grants and subject the land to taxation so soon as the companies arc entitled to them; to increase the naval establishment; to pension the Mexican war veterans; the oleomargarine act; to authorize the transfer of Highwood tract, near Chicago, to the United States for military purposes ; to proteot homestead settlers witnin railroad limits ; to enable national banking associations to increase their capital stock and change thoir name and location ; to grant a license to towing vessels to carry a limited number of persons in addition to their crews; to forfeit the “Back-Bone" land grant; to reduce the fees on domestic money orders for sums loss than $5; to extend the immediate-de-livery system; to prohibit the passage of local or special laws In the Territories; to provide for closing up the business of the Court of Alabama Claims ; to establish additional life-saving stations; for the construction of additional lighthouses ; extending the freo-delivery system to towns of 10,0U0 inhabitants ; for the sale of the Cherokee reservation in Arkansas ; to amend the statutes so as to require brewers to give bonds for three times their estimated monthly tax; for the issue of postal notes in sums less than $5 ;to validate the general laws of Dakota regarding the incorporation of insurance companies ; to provide for the inspection of tobacco, cigars, and snuff, and to repeal section 3151 of the Bevised Statutes; to make St. Charles, Mo., a port of entry; to allow underwriters to be recognized as consignees of merchandise on abandoned vessels ; to restrict ownership of lands in the territories to American citizens ; to amend tho act dividing Missouri into two judicial districts, and to divide it into eastern and western divisions ; to prohibit Government employes from hiring or contracting out the labor of United States prisoners ; to amend the duti-able-goods act so as to allow merchandise to be transported in bond on passenger trains in safes, pouches, and trunks, and in parcels; to amend the act prohibiting the importation and immigration of foreigners under labor contracts; for an additional associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Wyoming ; providing for the location of a branch soldiors’ home west of the Rocky Mountains; for the relief of the .Jeannette sufferers ; amendatory of the act dividing Illinois into judicial districts, and providing for the holding of terms of court at Peoria ; relative to contested elections; to loan articles in the Government departments to the Minnesota Industrial Exposition ; to regulate the jurisdiction of United States Circuit Courts ; for the adjustment of land grants and tho forfeiture of unearned lands; to add a number of cities to the list of national bank reserve cities, and to allow a part of the reserve to be kept In cities other than New York; for the relief of settlers on the publlo lands in Kansas and Nebraska; to provide for bringing suits against the Government; for the erection of public buildings at Los Angeles, Cal., Springfield, Mo., El Paso, Tex., Santa Fe. N. M., and Jefferson, Tex.; to increase tho limit of cost of public buildings at Peoria, 111., Galveston, Tex., Clarksburg, W. Va., Keokuk, lowa, Chattanooga, l’enn., Detroit, Mich.; for the completion or improvement of public buildings at Dallas, Tex., Des Moines, lowa, Jackson, Tenn.. and Hannibal, Mo., for the purchase of additional ground for the building at Fort Wayne, Ind.; for the purchase of a site for a Federal building at San Francisco, Cal. Forty House joint resolutions became laws, the principal ones being as follows: Directing the Commissioner of Labor to make an investigation as to convict labor; authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to use certain unexpended balances for the relief of the Northern Cheyennes of Wyoming ; to authorize tho President to protect American fishing and trading vessels and American fishermen in Canadian waters; authorizing an investigation of the books, methods, and accounts of the P&cifio railroads. Of the total number of bills which passed the Senate 320 became laws, Including 115 of a public and 205 of a strictly private nature. The following is a list of the more important: The Presidential succession bill; the interstate commerce bill; for the retirement and recoinage of the trade dollar; tho electoral count bill; for the allotment of lands in severalty to Indians ; to repeal tho tenure of office act; to increase the annual appropriation for the militia; to establish agricultural experiment stations ; to legalize the incorporation of trades unions ; authorizing the transmission of weather reports through the mails free of postage ; to increase tho pension for loss of an arm or leg; to indemnify the Chinese for lossos sustained by the Rock Springs (Wy. T.) riot; for the relief of Texas, Colorado, Oregon, Nebraska, California, Kansas, Nevada, Washington Territory, and Idaho; authorizing the salo of certain Government property in Chicago; for tho holding of terms of the United States Courts at Bay City, Mich.; to remove the charge of dosortion from the records of soldiers who re-enlisted without h iving received discharges on account of first enlistment; to establish two additional land districts in Nebraska; to amend the laws relating to patents, trade-marks, and copyrights ; to extend the time for the completion of the records of the Court of Alabama Claims; to credit Kansas with certain money on ordnance account; to bridge the Mississippi River at St. Louis; to allow receivers of national banks to buy in trust property on the approval of tho Comptroller of the Currency; to prohibit the importation of opium; for the erottion of public buib ings at £au Antonio, Texas, Houston, Texas, Oshkosh, Wis., Fort Smith, Ark., Owensborough, Ky., and Milwaukee, Wis.; to increase the limit or cost for public buildings at Oxford, Miss., and Denver, Col.; for the completion of public buildings at Fort Scott aud Wichita, Kansas. The Senate bills vetoed xvero thirty-nine in number, eleven being of a public and twentyeight of a private character. The public bills vetoed were as follows: To quiet the titles of settlers on the Des Moines River lands (passed over the veto in the Senate, but failed of the necessary two-thirds in the House); for the erection of public buildings at Zanesville, Ohio, Lafayette, Ind., Sioux City, lowa, Dayton, Ohio (passed over the veto in both houses), and Lynn, Mass.; to extend tho provisions of the immediate transportation act to Omaha, Neb.; to grant railroads right of way through the Indian reservations in Northern Montana. The ninety-three House hills vetoed included eighty-seven private bills and six bills 'of a public nature. The public bills vetoed were : . For the erection of Federal buildings at Springfield, Mo., Duluth, Minn., Asheville, N. C., and .Portsmouth, Ohio; to distribute 810,000 worth of seeds among the drought-stricken people of Texas; to,, grant pensions to dependent soldiers and dependent relatives of deceased soldiers. _ _ x