Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1905 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

Political and General Gossip of the National Capital. Special Correspondence to The Democrat: The government has already ran up against a snag in the investigation of the cotton leak from the Department of Agriculture. Two of the witnesses summoned from New York to answer questions in the investigation before the grand jury looking to the indictment of Holmes and perhaps other persons in connection with the leak have refused to answer and the court has given them one more day to consider their decision before sentencing them to jail for contempt. The ground taken by these witnesses, Haas and Peckham, both of whom are advised by counsel, is that the court has no jurisdiction to compel them to answer and that their answer might tend to incriminate them. Mr. Haas read a long statement to the court, prepared of course by his counsel, and asked the jury to make it a matter of record. How far the witnesses will go in their refusal to answer the questions of the district attorney is of course a question, but the ground on which they have based their refusal makes it possible that the court will not compel them to answer. At the same time their refusal on the ground that their answers might incriminate them, while it may be purely technical, renders their refusal the more interesting and probably will convince the jury that they know something worth revealing or perhaps better worth keeping secret. In either case it makes the proceedings of the grand jury more mysterious and interesting than ever and serves to convince the general public that the district attorney is going to have a whole lot of trouble in getting to the bottom of the case. He has promised that there is already sufficient ground for criminal proceedings but this is only natural to a man in his position and people will be more ready to believe that he is right after he has secured a conviction than before. t t t It seems however, that the trouble in the Department of Agriculture did not stop with the cotton leak. There have been other troublea under the surface in the Department and one of them was brought to light Saturday by the resignation of Dr. Geo. T. Moore of the Bureau of Soils. Secretary Wilson has complained year after year that he could not get men of the scientific calibre required by the Department for the wages that the government was willing to pay. The government has been pretty libeial and the appropriations for the Department have about doubled since 1898 but it appears that the private employers are still able to outbid the government. Dr. Moore while in the employ of the department devised a nitrogen compound that was supposed to be highly beneficial as a soil enricher and the device was patentled under his name by the AgriI cultural Department and a num-

ber of pamphlets written on the subject. It was about as good a n advertisement as a patent compound could have though the fact that it was patented by the department precluded the possibility of there being any commercial monopoly in its use. However, there was a company formed in West Chester, Pa., which was willing to take the risk and offered Dr. Moore a substantial salary and a good block of the company’s stock to come with them. The Doctor thought over the proposition and dickered with the department for a raise of salary. The negotiations dragged on and the raise was deferred for a long time. Meanwhile a block of stock was made in the name of the Doctor’s wife and stood that way till a hearing was had the other day from a couple of men on an agricultural paper when all the facts were brought out Dr. Moore wrote a letter to the Secretary tendering his resignation and stating that he did not want to embarrass the department by continuing in his present position if it should be any embarrassment. Sec. Wilson did not say whether it was an embarrassment or not but he accepted the resignation. t t t

In addition to the fresh row in the Agricultural Department, the government is confronted with more trouble in the Government Printing Office. That big institution has just been treated to a very funny investigation by a special government commission in connection with the purchase of seventy-two type setting machines. The commission was one of the most extravagantly secret in all of the numerous government investigations in Washington, and its report is now in the bands of the executive but has not yet been given to the public. Now it seems however that the government is tired of paying printing bills of the size recently presented to it, and as the appropriations demanded by the printing office have jumped from $3,500,000 in 1898 to $7,000,000 in the present year, a committee of which Senator T. C. Platt was the chairman, has been appointed to ransack the affairs of the office and get a little reduction if possible in the size of the bills. This committee bas not yet had a chance to meet. Rather it has had plenty of chance but the weather has been too warm and the members have not gotten together. When they do. however, they will find a nice state of affairs. The government has been saddled with the printing of the reports of Dr. Seldon Jackson relative to the breeding of reindeer Alaska. These reports are lengthy and profusely illustrated and the public which is deeply interested in the raising of reindeer in Alaska is some limited. But the reports have been printed under the authority of the Department of the Interior and they have helped largely to swell the printing bill. The Daughters of the American Revolution have also gotten the government to publish the reports of all their factional fights and feminine hairpulling which are too long even for the Washington papers to handle in detail, and the printery bas been made to reproduce all their portraits and the portraits or almost anyone else that wanted to get into print. t t t It is quite likely that this sort of thing will be stopped and stopped suddenly, but it has cost the government seven million in the past year and it may be said incidentally that the same sort of extravagance has run riot in a good many of the other government departments. If the same matter is handled sensibly and in a business like way by the coming Congress, it is quite possible that the appropriation bills might be so cut down that the Republicans would make good their boast that the deficit could be met without resort to additional taxes. But it is very doubtful with all the private and influential interests at court if anything will be forthcoming from the numerous investigations except a generous coat of white, wash.