Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1904 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

Political and General Gossip of the National Capitol. Special Correspondence to The Democrat: The agitation for an extra session in the Spring has measurably subsided, but the tariff revisionists are still inslstant and the proposition now at the front is that an extra session for its settlement shall be held next Fall —say, from September Ist to the regular time of meeting in December. This suggestion seemß likely to take the form of a determination shortly, for it solves the problem to the satisfaction of all members of the majority party. It is also pretty certain that there will be very little legislation at this session except the regular appropriation bills. This conclusion is concurred in by the men who make the program: by Messrs. Allison, Aldrich, Fairbanks, Lodge and others in the Senate, and Cannon. Payne, Hemenway, Grosvenor, Dalzell, and others in the House. Bills alleged to be for the benefit of the Philippine Islands have already passed the House and will probably become laws during this session. The bill providing for two new states may also pass. The appropriation committees of both houses are decidedly against a general river and harbor bill and a large public buildings bill, though an incessant clamor for both is kept up by those whose constituents helped re-elect the present administration and demand some more barrels of “pork.” In ihe House Speaker Cannon has with much candor sounded the alarm of “A big deficit in the Treasury,” and he will use his great influence against tapping it for hundred-million-dollar appropriations. In the Speaker’s chair and out of it, with gavel in hand or only with potent forefinger upraised, he calls attention to the fact that there has been an election which decided against “the Meddlers” and revisionists and the latter think that he calls attention to it with “damable iteration.” Their cries for immediate nourishment will probably be temporarily quieted by the promise of a chance

to tap Uncle Sam’s Pactolian reservoir next autumn, “when the corn is full of kernels and the colonels full of corn.” The President’s annual Sermon has now been thoroughly digested. Indeed, a large part of it has been predigested by something like a score of members of Congress. It is felt to be so chock-full of beautiful moral sentiment and maxims concerning correct conduct that it might have been dictated by Marcus Aurelius and Chesterfield. It shows that real goodness is preferable to real badness and will convince almost anybody that right doing is more creditable than wrong doing. In these respects it could not be improved. The people of this District are much pleased that he gave a whole column to its needs and elaborated plans for its elevation to become a working model for the whole country. His demand for a compulsory education law here is not well timed; partly because we have a compulsory education law now, and partly because no compulsory attendance can possibly be enforced here while the high schools are so pampered and receive so large a proportion of the fundsi,that there is no shelter for the primary grades and six Qr eight thousand youngsters who ought to be receiving elementary training are running wild in our streets and alleys. What is needed here is a vigorous reduction of the high school curriculum until all the cljildren below the fifth grade are sheltered under a roof and marshaled under a teacher. If all the recommendations of the message crystalize into law, there will be much stronger central government in Washington than was ever contemplated by the framers of the Constitution. For a long time the drift has been towards centralization—the Executive in the White House controlling nearly all the great enterprises in which the people are engaged. Mr. Roosevelt would add to the existing list the control of of railroads, banks, trust companies, insurance companies, factory conditions, hours of labor on railways, etc. He would have Federal commissioners to inspect all 1

rolling stock; to decide on all through rates of freight; to hold inquest on railroad accidents; to enforce the block signal system and regulate airbrakes; to enforce sanitary conditions wherever laboring men are assembled. As there are over a million and a half of cars and engines, (1,573,000) and several times that number of wheels to be hammered on and brakes to be tested, it would obviously require a good many men and a good deal of money for their adequate inspection. And how much more complete would it be than the General Slocum inspection? The 11,000 accidents which occur in the United States yearly involving 8,000 deaths and 60,000 persons injured, would require a large army of coroners and a vast multitude of inquests. This would be building up a beaurocracy of tremendous proportions which might end in nominal socialism and actual imperialism. Above his colleague’s cry for economy Senator Hale has made his voice heard demanding SIOO,000 for a statue of Benjamin Franklin in this city. As we have already a suberb marble statue of Poor Richard of heroic size on Pennsylvania Avenue, presented to the city by Mr. Stilson Hutchins, and as there is not yet in our streets or parks any Btatue of Robert Morris, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and a multitude of others, this proposed duplication of Franklin seems quite superfluous. It is certain that the frugal almanac-maker himself would not approve of it.

The introduction of bills to reduce the number of Southern Congressmen because of alleged disfranchisement of negroes will be followed by a most unhealthy excitement during the remainder of this session. Messrs. Platt and Crumpacker may attempt in vain to reimprison the Afrite which they have released. John Sharp Williams has met the proposition with defiance and Carmack with a joint resolution to investigate and expose the amount of money collected from trusts and others to effect presidential elections. Platt’s bill would reduce the total number of Southern Congressmen nineteen, but the Senator with an

exhibition of pretended generosity alleges that if the Constitution were strictly and rigidly enforced the reduction would not be leas than thirty In the cut-down proposed by Platt’s bill Georgia would lose more than any other state, being reduced from eleven to eight. It is safe to anticipate that the controversy thus stupidly begun will end in a tumult surpassing the Force Bill disputation as a hurricane surpasses a zephyr Heated conferences were held Friday on both sides showing a lack of unanimity on the part of both the friends of the measure and its opponents. Butyhe storm gathers and the end cannot be foreseen at present.