Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 August 1904 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

Political and General Gossip of the National Capitol. Special Correspond ence to The Democrat: Congressman Cowherd, Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Committee, has returned from New York to headquarters in this city, and has again tackled the business of the campaign. He got some money on his trip—enough to enable him to double the number of girls engaged in directing envelopes and sending off documents. There are fourteen different kinds of enclosures —speeches, statistics, and various data adapted to various localities, as indicated by the specific requests of state committees. It is still doubtful whether the Congressional committee will move its headquarters to New York to join the National Committee at its headquarters, Fifth Avenue and 35th street. It is felt that the business of both committees coidd be thus managed, more economically and expeditiously, but in any event some rooms will be retained at the Riggs House, here, and all documents will be franked from this city. The Congressional Committee is making a dead set on forty districts in the country now represented in Congress by Republicans who were elected by small majorities or under conditions which it is now believed can be overcome. Two years ago the Democratic Committee, by an expenditure of lets thm $20,000, made a clear gain of eighteen members on the previous Congress; and it is now believed by astute and experienced Democrats that an expenditure of $200,000 for speakers and documents would overturn Congress in November and give us a majority. I asked Congressman Cowherd if there was to be a consolidation of the committees in New York, and he merely said: “I don’t know.” But he probably wants to go to the metropolis, for “Old Money Bags” lives there. t t t Some prominent Democrats here who have been in exalted office and may be again, are warmly enthusiastic over Mr. Davis’ speech of acceptance at the White Sulphur Springs but express some fear that Congressman Williams’ speech of notification was too delicate to be generally understood. Such objections have been accus-

tomed to the slang-whang sledgehammer style of denunciation, and are startled by the sarcastic rapier thrusts of John Sharp. They would not appreciate poetry. E. P. Whipple says of this method of attack: “Irony is a condemnation conveyed in the form of a compliment; insinuating the most galling satire under the phraseology of panegyric; placing its victims naked on a bed of thorns covered with rose leaves; adorning his brow with a crown of gold, which burns into his brain; teasing and fretting and riddling him through and through with incessant discharges of hot shot from a masked battery; laying bare the most sensative and shrinking nerves of his mind, and smilingly pricking them with needles.” This is a fair definition of the machine-gun play indulged in by the little black-haired gentleman from Yazoo. It may be added that these who cannot comprehend that his purpose is ridicule when he flays alive the Republican pretentions, declaring that of course our forefathers ought to have had a good stiff tariff, if such a tariff is a blessing; that of course they ought not to have made a tea-pot of Boston harbor, if men have not a right to self-government, and when King George was simply treating us as we are treating the Filipinos; that of course the Puritans ought to have invited the Indians to participate in their town-meetings because one man is as good as another without regard to color or race; that of course, if Mr. Parker is elected it will be his duty to make laws by executive degree and usurp the functions of all the branches of the Government;—l say that if the average reader cannot understand the application of this verbal bombardmeut he must be scarsely able to understand anything. t t t General John Black former Pension Commissioner and now Civil Service Commissioner has stirred up a mare’s nest in Boston by declaring that the President’s decree giving pensions to all soldiers of the Civil War above the age of 62 years, “ought to be crystalized into law by act of Congress.” The Republican contention is that the Presidential decree is already good law, in that it simply defines a law already on the statute book, and that no meddling whatever by Congress can make it

any more solidified or crystalized. Gen. Black is in a position to know whether this contention is valid or not. Having been Pension Commissioner for four years, he now decides and publicly proclaims that it is not; that the President’s decree, under which millions of dollars have already been disbursed is not law, and cannot be until it is “crystalized.” It would be interesting to know what the President thinks of his officeholder in this connection. T t T Summer visitors to Washington are greatly surprised at the “improvements” in progress. A thirty-six inch railroad has been constructed straight across the plaza at the East front of the Capitol and carloads of earth are being whisked across from the site of the new marble palace being erected for the use of the members of the House, to the required fillings of the progressing Union station four squares north. “AU aboard for the Union Station site,” shouts the conductor, and the little “dinkey” engine puffs and pulls its trainload of dirt from southeast to northeast. Some 90,000 cubic yards of earth are to be excavated and removed. There is no regular time table as yet, but the schedule says “Every now and then.” The square from which the earth is taken is historic. Henry Clay lived there once. Thad Stevens owned and occupied a house that has just been torn down to make room for the new palace, when he was a member of the House, and when he was bo badly crippled that he could not walk or stand. “Boys,” he said to the two Irishmen who were carrying him from his home up the Capitol steps,“what shall I do when you are dead?” Judge Holt's sumptuous and spacious home a few doors down New Jersey Avenue has just been laid low. In this square lived Jean Davenport, the actress, widow of General Landor, and Mrs. Lippincott, best known as “Grace Greenwood.” Here lived Judge Springer, long a member of Congress from Illinois, and from a boarding house near by went John Randolph long ago to fight his duel with Clay. t t t The coroner’s jury has brought in a verdict of “Accidental and unavoidable” in the case of the small boat upset in the recent re-

gatta on tbe Potomac by whioh ten persons lost their lives. This in face of tbe fact that the law makes it the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to patrol the course at regattas and “enforce the rules.” Secretary Shaw makes excuse that he had no revenue cutter boat available at the time.