Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 February 1905 — RESENTS A WARNING [ARTICLE]

RESENTS A WARNING

The butchers keep right on charging the same prices for meat as if the Supreme Court had not rendered that decision.

The trusts that have been finding difficulty in "doing business” with the Nebraska legislature are threatening to elect their own legislature next time.

Fowler Leader: The bill to reimburse the persons who had money in busted banks should have an appendix to it, which should read that not a dollar of the fund should be paid until the defaulting officer had been punished.

If there are still any people in Jasper comity who are so poorly supplied with gray matter that that they think the state will pay the $23,000 called for in the Nichols relief bill, we would refer them to the acts of 1903, page 513, where a similar act appears. Read the last paragraph of the preamble.

Oxford Tribune: If the legislature passes a special act relieving the treasurer of Jasper county for the loss of funds in the McCoy bank and the treasurer of Newton county for funds in the Gilman bank, we see no reason why we can’t have that body do the Carnegie act to the depositors of the old Dwiggins bank. Tit for tat.

But few bills have as yet passed both branches of the state legislature, and of those the Moore bill is probably of the most interest. A bill has passed the senate to increase the pay of petit and grand jurors from $2 to $3 per day and to increase their mileage from 5 cents to 10 cents per mile; also a bill to increase the mortgage exemption from S7OO to SI,OOO. Both these bills will probably become laws.

The Moore temperance bill which has passed both branches of the legislature and been signed by the governor, provides that the voterß of a township or ward (in the case of a city) may remonstrate either against the applicant for a license or against the business, and that such remonstrance, when once filed, shall hold good against the applicant, or the business, as the case may be, for a period of two years. No withdrawals can be made from the remonstrance when once filed, and when a town or city ward successfully remonstrates against the saloon business, other applicants are held from applying for license each month, as is the case with the law at present.

Starke County Democrat: A condition bas been discovered by the investigation following the embezzlement of county funds by Frank Obencbain, treasurer of Cass county, which it is to be hoped does not exist in many counties. It develops that a loan of some $7 ,000 of county funds has been passed along through the terms of four county treasurers, being carried along and passed from one to the other as cash on band. Such a proceeding furnishes a strong argument in favor of frequent official examinations of the books and funds of all public officers handling the people’s money. An officer who will be a party to such misuse of public funds has a badly warped idea of individual or official probity.

Senate Offended at the President's Letter to Cullom on the Treaties. DOES JUST WHAT HE OPPPOSED Proposed Treaties Made a “Step Back* ward”, in His Stated Views. Pointed Extracts from the letter, Which Foretell the Death of All the Conventions Negotiated. Washington, Feb. 13.—The friction between the president nnd the senate over the arbitration treaties, although there is no acrimony developed so far, is the question of the hour here. The president's letter to Senator Cullom, chairman of the senate foreign affairs committee, was like a “red rag to a hull,” and made certain tne action of the senate (which was almost certain before) in insisting upon modifying these treaties. Colonel John W. Foster, president of the National Arbitration Conference, says that so far as his colleagues were concerned the word “agreement” in the promised treaties meant the same as “treaty,” and they never contemplated the president making these “agreements” without the advice and consent of the senate. He hoped the president would find n way to reconcile the difference between himself and the senate. Reprenenta a Step Backward. But the president's letter to Cullom, does not look that way, and when Cullom read It to the senate In executive session it caused a mild sensation. The salient points of his letter follow: ‘‘l learn that the senate committee on foreign relations lias reported the arbitration treaties to the senate, amending them by substituting for the word ‘agreement’ in the second article the word ‘treaty.’ The effect of the amendment is to make it no longer possible, as between the contracting parties, to submit any matter whatever to arbitration without first obtaining a special treaty to cover the case. This will represent not n step forward, but a step backward.” Will Drop the Whole Batch. “If the word 'treaty' be substituted the result is that every such agreement must be submitted to the senate, and these general arbitration treaties would then cease to be such, and, indeed, in their amended form, they would amount to a specific pronouncement against the whole principle of a general arbitration treaty. * * * If, however, in the judgment of the president, a given amendment nullifies a proposed treaty it seems to me that it is no less clearly his duty to refrain from endeavoring to secure a ratification by the other contracting power or powers of the amende.! treaty; and after much thought I have come to the conclusion that I ought to write nnd tell you that such is my Judgment in this case,” Nothing Whatever Accomplished. “It would not, in my judgment, he wise or exiWHlient to try to secure the assent of the other contracting powers to the amended treaties, for even if such assent were secured we should still remain precisely where we were before, save where the situation may be changed a little for the worse. * * * Personally it is not my opinion that this government lacks the power to enter into general treaties of arbitration, but if lam in error, and it this government has no power t enter into such geneal treaties then it seems to me that it is better not to attempt to make them rather than to make the attempt in such shape that they shall accomplish literally nothing whatever when made.”

SENATE PUTS IN THE WORD Prealdenl’* Action in Writing the Letter I* Not Taken Kindly. When the senate met in executive session Saturday Cullom read the president’s letter and it was sharply criticised as a usurpation of the right* of the senate. Even Spooner insisted that tile senate Should uphold its dignity as a co-ordinate branch of the government and that it could not accept the view of any other branch of the government in the matter of exercising its constitutional functions as a part of the treaty making power. There were no defenders of the propriety, from a constitutional stand-point, of the letter. I.odge, the president’s bosom friend, declared, while bolding that the senate should stand to its rights, that he was sure the president was not willfully trying to usurp the powers of the senate nor to gather to himself any powers other than that.which constitutionally belonged to the executive, and that the differences were confined to phraseology in the treaties. There was no acrimony in the discussion, but the writing of the letter was generally resented. ■* The result was that when it came to | vote the word ‘'agreement” was struck out and “treaty” put in its place, making it necessary to negotiate a treaty for every case that is arbitrated. As the purpose of the treaty was plainly to eliminate this process, the so-called arbitration treaties become only a declaration that the United States is willing to negotiate treaties to arbitrate questions in dispute. The only votes in the negative were those of Dolliver, Fairbanks, Hopkins, McCumber, Nelson, Platt of Connecticut, Stewart, Warren and Wetmore. The clause of the proposed treaties

so radically amended is in article 2, as follows: "In each Individual case the high contracting parties, before appealing to the permanent court of arbitration, shall conclude a special ‘treaty’ defining clearly the matter in dispute,” etc. The word “treaty” takes the place of “agreement” in the treaties as they were negotiated. In discussing the letter to Cullom Morgan spoke of it as another evidence of the president’s tendency toward the usurpation of the senatorial prerogative and said that the president had no more right to interfere with the senate’s consideration of the subject at this stage of the preceeding than the senate would have had to interfere with him while the treaty was In process of preparation.