Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 231, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1919 — WASHINGTON NEWS IN BRIEF. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON NEWS IN BRIEF.

Washington, D. C., Sept. 23. Both houses of congress gave attention to the strike in the steel mills, and the senate instructed the committee on labor to begin an investigation at once into “causes and reasons” for the conflict. E. H. Gary, of the steel corporation, and Johp Fitzpatrick, of the steel workers, have been summoned to appear before the committee Tuesday. In the house Representative Cooper, of Ohio, uttered a warning: against the= danger of organized labor 'being misled by such a. “revolutionary agitator” as William -Z. Foster. President Gompers, of the A. F. of L„ before the senate interstate commerce committee,. denounced the anti-strike provision of the Cummins railroad 'bill, which he said .would “disband organized labor.”

Administration forces sustained a defeat today in the first vote on the peace treaty fight when the opposition in the senate, challenged by Senator Hitchcock, voted to defer action on the Fall amendments for one week. The vote was 43 to 40. ■Senator Johnson returned , today from his speaking tour and is planning to force action on his amendment to increase America’s representation in the league of nations assembly. Secretary Baker admitted before the house committee on military affairs that his views on the proper size of the army in the future were indefinite. He said an army much smaller than 500,000 might be sufficient, but that if there is no league of nations this nation would have to be “armed to the teeth.” John T. Pratt and Dr. Samuel McCune Lindsay, representing the national budget committee, urged an executive budget prepared by a bureau of experts "before the special house budget committee. . They favored the appointment of budget experts foT a period of years. Mexico was pictured as a 'bankrupt nation, the effect of years of terror and revolt, before the senate investigating committee by Thomas R. Lill, who, with Henry Bruere, made a study of Mexico’s financial condition at the request of Luis Cabrera, Carranza’s minister of finance. The funded debt of Mexico now approaches- 700,000,000 pesos, on which 175,000,000 pesos of interest is due. Mr. Lill said that Mexico could not assume the payment of this vast sum.