Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 April 1904 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

Political and General Gossip of the National Capitol. Special Correspondent to The Democrat: Legitimate business goes forward by spasmodic jerks in both Senate and House. The Ssnate now has the Post Office appropriation bill in hand and the House is trying to swing the civil service appropriation bill every night “a day’s march nearer home.” The reading clerk is presenting them item by item, and contesting the floor as far as the Speaker will let him with members who insist upon carrying on an acrimonious partisian debate between sentences. This hesitating progress has continued day by day. On Thursday Senator Gorman spiritedly arraigned the republican party for sins of commission and omission, especially for refusing to investigate the diffusive postoffice scandal. He insisted that under lax methods corruption had permeated every department of the government; that thousands of office-holders had snatched boodle merely because their party had been too long in power and would probably soon be driven from all places of authority. Senator Dolliver, (Iowa) “the” Republican orator, deprecated the “senseless clamor” which demanded investigation, and insisted that adequate and ample investigation had already been made and reported by the Post Office Department itself. There had been enough

investigation, he said, and Congress ought to go straight on with its work. Gov. McCreary, (Ky..) asked Mr. Dolliver if it was generally considered adequate for a prisoner to sit in judgment on his own offenses. Senator Patterson, (C 0. insisted that there had been no investigation whatever in reply to the demand which had been made for one by the Commissioners appointed by the President himself, and declared that an early adjournment had been decided on to avoid legislation not desired by the President. There was to be no tariff revision; no public building bill; no river and harbor bill; no reciprocity; no investigation of various scandals: no settlement of the Swayne or Smoot cases. Senator Lodge asked him if the nation had not prosperity, and when in the past there had ever been such a high tide of prosperity as under the Dingley act. Senator Patterson replied that the country had had flush times and periods of depression under both parties and all kinds of legislation, but he would venture to say that under the so-called free-trade regime of 1846, there was more general thrift and national prosperity than there had been under the administrations of McKinley and Roosevelt. Senator Lodge admitted that the worst feature of the socalled post-office scandal was the fact now revealed that there had been “secret rules” in the department for the benefit of Congress; it was hoped that the present bill would abolish them.

In the house there are premonitory sports everyday. Williams, democratic leader, said the situation bristled with issues for the campaign. The party in power would be held responsible not merely for its failure to cultivate reciprocal relations with other nations and its refusal to punish grafters or investigate manifest and palpable corruption, and for bankrupting the treasury, but especially for its refusal to prosecute the coal-carrying-railroad trust and to bring criminal action against the Northern Securities Company and condign punishment on the promoters of that conspiracy. He added that the impeachment of Judge Swayne ought to be vigorously carried on or stopped; that it was not dignified or decent to hold a high judicial officer in suspension while his arraigners went home to fix their fences. 111 , Although there will be no new public building began or authorized this year, the house has provided in the sundry civil bill for a magnificent addition to the Capitol—an extension of the main body of the building eastward 108 feet so as to bring it out upon the plaza flush with the two wings. This addition will contain sixtysix spacious and gumptious rooms, half of which will belong to the House and half to the Senate. The entire extension will cost $2,500,000, and will be finished in two years. Leading from tbe east steps to the rotunda will be a beautiful marble vestibule, 108 feet long, forming a grand entrance to the bnilding. The Senate will probably ratify the scheme. t t t The administration indulges in vociferous joy over the news from

Paris that the Panama title is clear and Colombia has lost her canal suit in the French court, enabling the canal company to turn over the property to us during the present month. When he read the news Senator Lodge rushed up to the White House and embraced the President with no more attempt to hide his emotion than two girls show upon the street when confiding to each other their matrimonial prospects. Other visitors gave way, and diplomatically shrunk into embrasures of the windows, and slid behind portieres so as to see, not to be witnesses of the too ardent felicitations and transports of rapture. Now let us see if Uncle Sam can read his title clear to ditches in the swamp. t t t The numerous understrappers who have risen from Shank’s ordinary mare to a gorgeous equipage during the last two of three years will be deeply embarassed by the sundry civil bill, if it goes through the Senate unscathed. It provides that all carriages owned by the government shall hereafter bear the painted name of the department which they serve. This will diminish their use as private chariots to some extent, but, as it stands, the identifying name need not be any larger than the type in which this letter is printed, and they may put it on the inside or on the under side. So there are chances of escape. t t t

It will not be denied that the Y. M. C. A. has its share of gall. It has applied to be superintendent of all the new army post exchange buildings, with the privilege of introducing all sorts of religious quarrels into the military service. This is fairly matched by the proposition that the government shall give 70,000,000 acres of irrigated land to the Salvation Army and lend it millions of money.