Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1899 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

(From our regular correspondent.) The unsuccessful bluffer is sicken of as a duffer by sports. Well, Alger is an unsuccessful political bluffer, and the result will be his retirement from public life on August 1. Somehow this bluffing phase of the question has been overlooked. But a close friend of Alger’s is responsible for the statement that Alger’s resignation was handed to Mr. McKinley as a big bluff, with the expectation that he would decline it in a nice little note that Alger could have published to refute the charge that he was remaining in the Cabinet

against Mr. McKinley’s wishes, and that Alger was the most surprised man in Washington when he received Mr. McKinley’s note accepting his resignation to take effect August 1. The same man says that Alger is very mad, although pretending to be greatly pleased, and that he may toss a few bombshells administration ward, afi ter he drops official harness, and that their explosion will not make pleasant music for Mr. McKinley. If the new Secretary of War—Mr. I Root—is merely to look after the ' legal questions connected with our 1 military occui>ation of Cuba. Porto Rico and the Philippines, leaving military affairs to be controlled by Meiklejohn and Corbin, and that is the present understanding. AlI gerisHKtisn’t likely to depart with Alger. I• * « Unless Mr, Elihu Root, of NewYork, can persuade Mr. McKinley ;to shake up the War Department i clique and to give Gen. Miles the say that properly belongs to him ias Commanding General of the Army, in all strictly Military matters, be will live to regret the day he so eagerly accepted the War portifolo to perform duties properly belonging to the Attorney General, after two members of the Cabinet, fully conversant with the situation, had declined to do so, and to stand before the country las a figure head responsible for the conduct of the War Departi ment. * * # Perhaps it was a fellow feeling that caused “Corporal” Tanner, who was kicked out of the Pension Bureau by Harrison, after a few 7 months service as Commissioner, to rush into print with fuli some praise of Alger and Algerisni. Whatever it was, it was creditable to Tanner's heart, if not to his sense of thrift, to stand up for the under dog, in this fracas, because he liked him personally, although he knew when he did it that it was likely to lessen his own pull j on the administration. * * * Mr. M. L. Lockwood, of Pennsylvania. President of the American Anti-Trust League, which although a non-partisan organization, purposes to take an important part in the Presidential campaign. is a strong Bryan demociat. and he says_of the sentiment of Pennsylvania democrats: “I am in touch with the true democrats iof Pennsylvania, and it is safe to i say that ninety-five per cent of ‘ them are loyal to Bryan, and the principles of the Chicago platform. The real democracy of the state and of all the other states must be on the alert, for if the tricksters get one vote more than one-third lof all the members of the National Convention, they will accomplish their end. which is the defeat jof Bryan. The monopolistic and i trust interests will bend all their ; energies to defeat his nomination because they recognize that no human power can prevent his victory at the polls, if he be again declared the nominee of the demo- ' cratic party." . * .

The statement that Hon. AV. C. Whitney, whose shrewd manipulation procured the last nomination of Mr. Cleveland, in spite of seemingly invincible obstacles.had gone to Europe for the purpose of trying to persuade Admiral Dewey to allow his name to go before the next Democratic Convention, as a candidate for the Presidential nomination, while interesting, was not regarded in Washington as of any particular importance. Mr, Whitney has been hunting for some time for anybody to beat Bryan, and has sounded a number of men as to their willingness to contest the nomination with Col. Bryan. Nobody with the slightest political knowledge has shown any dispositibn to try to do the impossible, and it is among the possibilities that Mr. Whitney, banking upon Admiral Dewey’s ignorance of politics and existing political conditions, may intercept him somewhere in Europe and try to persuade him to attempt it. Those who know him best say that Admiral Dewey never changes his mind, after having once decided a question, and that be will give Mr. Whitney the same answer he has already given to others to the same.question. * * * Gen. Carlos Garcia, son of the late Gen. Calixto Garcia, is in Washington, as a representative of the Cuban republican League, which advocates complete political independence of Cuba. He asked Mr. McKinley for authority to hold elections for municipal offices, throughout Cuba, in order to demonstrate the ability of the Cubans to govern themselves. Mr. McKinley did not give him a decided answer, but it had been previously said by officials that no elections would be held in Cuba, until a census of those entitled to vote had been taken.