Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1898 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

(From our regular correspondent.) It has been definitely settled that Mr. McKinley will in his annual message to Congress, recommend that the regular army be increased to 100,000 men, and that he will endorse the recommendation of Secretary Long that three battleships and twelve cruisers be built, and twenty thousand men and two thousand five hundred boys be enlisted in the Navy. * * * Mr. McKinley has shown his adroitness as a politician by deciding not to recommend any legislation at the coming sessio* of Congress for Porto Rico or the Philipines, and to keep the islands under military rule for a while. He knows that the question of legislation for the islands will be a troublesome one and prefers that it shall not be taken up until his party has a majority in both branches of Congress. >* * * It is announced that the Canadian American Commission, now gitting in Washington, has made great progress, but the announcers take good care to accompany the announcement with the statement that the agreements reached by the Commission have been only upon minor matters, and that the important questions are still up in the air. It is further stated that none of the agreements reached are to be binding unless agreements are reached upon everything, which indicates that the “great progress” is largely imaginary. *,* * How some men’s heads do grow after they get an office. During the years that Perry Heath did newspaper work around Washington, nobody ever suspected him of greatness, although he was always on the lookout for the main chance and got his name on the public pay roll at every opportunity—for a long time he drew pay as a laborer in the folding room at the Capitol, hiring a man, at half his salary, to do the work —but he got into Boss Hanna’s good graces, and 10, he became First Assistant Postmaster General; and now he wants to be Senator from Indiana. Should that want be gratified, he will have to have his hats made to order. His head is already swelled out of the recognition of many of his old friends. * * *

The republican U. S. District Attorney, for South Carolina, spent two entire days consulting the administration, upon what should be done by the Attorney General, if anything, about the race troubles in that state. The District Attorney w T as not enthusiastic over the probable success of the plan of trying to get indictments against white men for participating in riots, from a Federal grand jury, which has been adopted by the administration, but he will have to try it on, if the administration insists; he wishes to continue drawing his salary. Telbert, the Assistant Post Master, who was driven away from McCormick, has decided to remain in Washington and try to catch a government job, on the strength of his “martyrdom.”

It is the easiest thing in the world to get people accustomed to and indifferent to large public expenditures. Only a few years ago the appropriation of a billion dollars by a republican Congress aroused the public opinion of the country, and elected a democratic President and Congress. Since then, about every Congress has been a billion-dollar Congress, and the present Congress, which has already appropriated almost a billion dollars, will, by the end of the coming * short session, huve reached the tw© billion mark. It is true that a considerable portion of this money is chargeable to the war, but outside of the war, the public expenditures are entirely too extravagant, and might be largely curtailed without lessening the efficiency of the government. * * * Nobody need be misled by the backing and filling of the Peace Commissioners and the weekly crisis, on paper, always accompanied by an alleged ultimatum vent by this government. There has been but >tie {uestion to be settled since tnid government demanded the Philipines. The price we are to pay for them. That question is still unsettled. Why, some of the Spanish bondholders could doubtless tell. When it is settled we will have the Treaty of Peace and not before. That Mr. McKinley could quickly settle this business by sending an ultimatum is unquestioned; also that he ought to do it, but it is humiliating, in the extreme, to have men close to the administration announcing every week that one has been sent, when

a day or two afterwards it becomes apparent to all the world that it has not. - * * * Assistant Secretary of War Meiklejohn wishes to be the Hanna-McKinley candidate for the Senate, from Nebraska, and his friends say that he thinks he will be, the conditions being that he shall promise to support the administration in all things in the Senate, and that he shall secure a solid McKinley delegation from Nebraska to the Republican National Convention in 1900. The same sort of pledge is being exacted as the price of administration support of all the other candidates for the Senate, in states where the legislatures to elect Senators are controlled by the republicans. Mr. McKinley seems reasonably certain of a renomination,' but Boss Hanna will take no chances and will, if in his power, clinch the thing long before the convention is held. It is to carry out this clinching programme that the Republican National Committee is to open headquarters in Washington, at once, and keep them open until after the Presidential election. ~lt is also a part of this scheme to exhibit the strength of the administration machine to Czar Reed, as a warning.

John W. Keeley, of Keeley motor fame, died at his home in Philadelphia last week after a brief illness from pneumonia. Twenty or thirty years ago Keeley astonished the whole civilized world by his extravagant claims and the public exhibition of his still incomplete invention. Since that time large sums of money have been advanced by capitalists to perfect the invention, but without any practical results. In 1888 he was confined in jail for a time for contempt of court in refusing to disclose the secret by which he produced many remarkable effects in the presence of experts, but the secret died with him.