Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 December 1905 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

Political and (Jeneral Gossip of the National Capital. One of the most bitter attacks ever made in the Senate upon the President was delivered by Senator Tillman last week It dealt particularly with the Santo Domingo treaty ati’d in general with what Mr Tillman termed “the usurpation of authority” by the executive. The President was warmly defended by Spooner and the result was »hat might be termed a drawn battle with no results except to show that the President and some of his policies have warm opponents in the south. Senator Tillman said that he would admit the President was a patriotic man from his own point of view but that when he ouce conceived an ideH. he did not let law, precedent nor the constitution stand in the way of carrying it out. As to the Santo Domingo treaty, Senator Tillman said that the President simply waited till he got Congress off his hands and then went to work carrying out his pet idea as to the solution of the Santo Domingan trouble, To this Senator Spooner replied that the Senate had left the President in an embarrassing position by adjourning without acting on the Santo Domingo treaty and that the President had nothing to do but to lake the matter into his own hands. Senator Spooner said that when the trouble reached an acute stage an Italian warship had appeared on the scene and it was only the presence of American warships that had prevented other powers from sending warships too aud following the lead that Italy had attempted of looking out for their own interests United States had held the custom houses, said he, there hud been no revolution and very little talk of one. If the Senate did not act on the treaty, the money that had been collected and was now in safe keeping for the creditor

nations would become the property of Santo Domingo, while the powers Would be left to look after their debts and their interests as be6t they could. It was altogether an unpleasant and unseemly squabble and there was little outcome to it except that it, if anything, deepened the breach between the Senate and the Executive. It is a question whether the cause of the Santo Domingan treaty Inis been held or hurt by the incident. That can only be told when the measure comes before the Senate in executive session. But it has at least made clear that the United States up to date has been acting in prefec'tly good faith toward the creditor nations and if the matter is not legislated on during the present session, the President will at least have cleared his skirts and the responsibility will rest on the Senate in not having taken advantage of the order that lie has maintained in Santo Domingo. ,t t t Insular business is well to the fore. The bids for the 1,000 miles of railway in the Philippines have been opened and while tho successful bidders have not yet been Hnuounced,it is shown 4hat there is capital ready and waiting to carry out tho whole scheme of railway extension. Col. Edwards, the Chief of the Insular Bureau, has said that one of the most j pressing needs of tho Philippines | was for h good system of railway ! and highway communication and j this is practically assured. There j are several classes of bids for the I work and one of them at least is from an English corporation which wants to put in almost half of the total mileage One of the other firms bidding while nominally American is really international in character and if its bid is accepted will doubtless get a large part of the money from England. Whether it will be wise to accept this foreign helping ' hand or not is a question, hut it is

significant that foregin countries think well enough of the stable government now operating in the Islands to be willing to put their money there. It may be remarked too that the bids are onder the thirty year guarantee which would mean that the American government for more than a generation would stand sponsor to the undertaking, a thing it would not <be likely to do if there was any chance of the American flag being hauled down and the Islands vacated by the United States. That iB really the most significant fact that was developed by the transaction. t t t The Philippines also consumed most of the day before the Ways and Means Committee of the House. The beet sugar men of the Northwest had a hearing* in which W. S. Humphrey spoke lengthily against the lowering of the Philippine duty on sugar. He said that it would kill the beet sugar industry in this country. The Philippines, he said, produced 6,000.000 tons more of sugar than this country consumed and that if the tariff wall were broken down, the whole of this flood would be let loose on the American market. He was asked whether the bulk of the Philippines sugar would not as heretofore go to China and Japan, neither 6f which were parties to the Brussels sugar convention. But he replied that it would not as the most of the sugar sent from the Philippines to China was refined in factories on English ground and would be excluded on the ground of undue preference by the United States. Whatever the effect on the beet sugar industry of the cane sugar industry of the south undoubtedly would he wipe out.

The old question of reducing the southern representation on account of the disfranchisement of some of the negroes in the south, was again brought up last week by Mr. Bennett of New York, the north always taking the lead in settling the negro problem, which it is very easy to do, being further from the scene of action. Mr. Bennett’s bill provides for the reduction of southern representation from 386 to 351 and would divide the reduction as follows: Alabama from 1) to 5, Arkansas from 7 to 5, Florida from 3 to 2, Georgia from 11 to 6, Louisiana from 7 to 4, Mississippi from 8 to 3, North Carolina from 10 to 7, South Carolina from 7to 3, Tennessee from 10 to 8, Texas from 16 to 13, and Yiriginia from 10 to 7. It is not likely however, with the press of other legislation, that the bill will get very serious consideration. An arm-load of old papers for a nickel at The Democrat office. Subscriptions taken for newspapers and magazines at Cox’s news-stand.

I have a number of Barred Plymouth Rock Cockerels and Pekin Ducks for sale; all are extra fine. For prices call on or address, Thomas Heed, R. F. D. Remington, Ind. Independent ’phone, 2 on 7'J.