Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1900 — POLITICS OF THE DAY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

POLITICS OF THE DAY

HIGH-HANDED USURPATION.

Mr. McKinley is using bis executive office to farther an imperial form of government, independent of Congress or Gonstitatian. The Chicago Chronicle calls attention to this Innovation: For the first time in the history of the conntry a series of commissions, socalled. have, under this administration, been created to discharge many important functions of the Government. A very few of these commissions were instituted by law. But the most of them were created by the President without authority of law, under what is claimed to be the war power of the executive. In some cases, as in that of YV. J. Calhoun and Robert P. Porter, individual emissaries were appointed at enormous expense for the mete purpose, as alleged, of procuring information for the action of the President. ,Tbe military and diplomatic (dicers of the Government were not trusted to perform this labor. An incomplete list of the commissions under this administration and those costing the most are as follows: Peace commission $300,000 Nicaragua canal commissions.. 250,000 Philippine commission ....... 150,000 Alger commission (embalmed beef) 150,000 Queen’s jubilee commission.... 00.UU0 The evacuation commission... 50,000 Seal commissions 45,000 Hawaiian commission 50,000 Insular commission .!......!. 9oj)UO Hague peace congress commission 35,000 John A. Kasson, treaty expert! 80,000 Robert P. Porter, tariff expert! 40,000 W. J. Calhoun, commissioner to Cnba 20,000 Maj. Handy, commissioner to Paris 20,000 Total so far .. .$1,300,000 It is proposed also to create a new Philippine commission to reinvestigate the conditions of our new possessions in the Indian Ocean. This commission win have broader scope than any previous commission. It may he in existence for years. It will pay well. Judge Taft thinks that membership on the commission will be so fat a Job that he has given up the office of United States Circuit Judge at a salary of $6,000 a year and all the comforts of a civilized home in order that he may accept the place. It is estimated that this commission will cost the country a million dollars before it gets through with its work. And other commissions may exist not included in this list or planned in the executive mind. The method of governing by commissions is outside of the Constitution and the laws. It is a scheme to avoid the proper responsibility which belongs to the President. It is a plan to establish an array of respectable names behind which the President can hide if the plans of the administration fail and meet with disaster.

The Droop!nic American Kaglr. When the British lion roars, the Amerian eagle, at present in charge of William McKinley, drops off its perch and scarries into the bashes with drooping tail and head. Great Britain has us, and showers greater insults upon than we did upon Agulnaldo. Hoe is something to make an American citizen hang his head and wish he were a Bon- or a Filipino: It will astound Americans to know that the British authorities are familial with the American consular code. On Not. 8 Mr. Macrnm sent a cablegram in code to the State Department urgently requesting that he be permitted to come home. Usually cablegrams, because of the difference in time between South Africa and the country, consume two days in transmissiontaut is to say, the cable sent by Mr. Macrnm on Oct. S would normally have been received by the State Department on Oct. 10. But on Oct 9. before the cablegram was received by the State Department certainly, and before it was sent from South Africa probably, the British papers in Natal, hundreds of miles away; announced in impressive type that Mr. Macrnm. the American consul at Pretoria, desired to be permitted to go home. Consul Hollis at Lourenzo Marquez Is well aware of the British acquaintance with the American consular code and the last thing he told an American who was about departing was, “For God's sake, tell the State Department to change our code number. As soon as we send out anything from here all Britain knows what we hare said." The State Department may not know the surprising fact that it is impossible for a United States consular or diplomatic representative in South Africa to communicate with his Government without Informing the British Government of the nature of the message. Nevertheless, the American consular agent at Bloemfontain, of the name of BRiott. Is a subject of Great Britain and perniciously active in his espousal of the British cause and the expression of his contempt for the “Dutch farmOassKtiM with Great Britain. We respectfully call the attention of William McKinley. President, and John Hay, Secretary of State, to the declaration moved In the Continental Congress. on the 7th day of June, 1776; by Richard Henry Lee and unanimously adopted by the tt is good tkm with the scheme to form connections and alliances with Britain for her

benefit and our undoing. Here is the resolution: “Resolved, That these United Colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain Is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”—Buffalo Times. A Friend in Need. “Didn’t I help you in your Spanish war by keeping my hands off?” This, to us, quoth England. Now comes the Spanish premier, Silvela, who tells a different story. Premier Silvela declared recently in the Spanish Senate “that previous to the war with the United States the British Government had consented to let Spain have 8,500 shells which were being manufactured for England at Maxim’s factory at Placentia meets with vigorous denial in London. Albert Vickers, head of the Vickers-Maxim firm, said: ‘Senor Silvela lied. There is not a word of truth in this allegation that England helped Spain to fight the United States. In the first place the factory at Placentia is a branch of our concern, built at the request of Spain, because that country wanted ammunition of home manufacture. It Is under the Spanish Government’s control, and there never was a shell manufactured there for sale in England or in any country except Spain, where a law against the export of ammunition exists.’ ” Lord Salisbury says “tain’t so, and if it is so the Vickers-Maxim company furnished the shells without the knowledge of the British Government.” The idea of the British Government being ignorant when an "honest penny is to be made! She would have deprived the infant Savior of His swaddling clothes for money.

“Delay RuininK the-Country.” The following telegram from the San Juan Chamber of Commerce was received at Washington a few days ago: “Situation becoming more desperate and unendurable, due principally to advices of opposition to opening markets for tobacco and sugar. Delay ruining eoantry. Saving measures urgent.” These are the people who welcomed Gen. Miles so heartily in the summer of 1898, thinking the Americans had come to deliver them from the yoke of Spanish tyranny. But the Americans are worse than the Spaniard so far as commerce goes. The Porto Ricans enjoyed free trade with the home Country. The Republican protectionists propose to shut them out of the United States. What has become of the American promises to grant these people the blessings of liberty? The first consequence of the American occupation is a restriction of markets which threatens to ruin their commerce and starve the workers of the island.—St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Capital Wanted, Not Money. Ex-Speaker Reed expresses the trust, gold standard and imperialistic idea when he says capital and not money is what we want. Aside from the humorous view that may be suggested by this reversion to the trading facilities approved by nations still in the darkness of savagery, there is an economic Idea concealed in it. Are we not reaching a point where the masses will not be allowed to have any money, but be compelled to rest satisfied with the necessaries of life doled out to them in such rations as will enable them to live and—what? Work? Wherefore work? For mere necessaries? No one need work for sustenance; all that is necessary is to join the army of tramps. They have no money, yet they live, moreover they do not work. Reduced to a Fine Art. Ballot box stuffing has been reduced to a fine art by the Republicans in Pennsylvania and Kentucky and there is every reason to believe it was practiced on a large scale by that party in 1896 in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. Their recent experiences in Kentucky and Pennsylvania will probably cause them to be more circumspect in the future, In which event there is no doubt of Bryan’s election by the largest majority ever given a Presidential candidate.—Joplin (Mo.) Globe.

A Queer Proposition. > One-quarter of the sum England it expending in the war to extend its dominion in South Africa would suffice to feed every starving mouth in India. That the world should be asked to support her famine-stricken subjects In one part of the empire in order that she may devote all her energies and money to crashing a people who stand in the way of a limitless extension of the empire in another part, Is certainly a most extraordinary proposition.—Springfield Republican. ' ■ Usurper Taylor, of Kentucky, says be will now torn his attention to the courts. It is understood that Kentucky judges are wondering which of them will be assassinated first.—Albany ArgunFrom Consul Macrimrs account of the attempt to make sßrltish consol of him at Pretoria it might seem that John Hay himself has been doing some “loafing around the throne.”—New Turk World.