Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1906 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

Political and Oeneral Gossip of the National Capital. From our special correspondent: The Committee which is looking into Panama Canal affairs has gotten itself into a bad tangle at the Very outset of its labors. It has a recalcitrant witness on its hands in the person of Mr. Poultney Bigelow, a magazine writer of some reputation. Mr. Bigelow was a college classmate of Emperor William of Germany and close friend of President Roosevelt beside being a traveler, a good all round sportsman and a writer of international repute. Mr Bigelow, it will be remembered, some time ago wrote a magazine article saying a number of unpleasant things about the Panama situation. He was singled out by Secretary Taft as the one writer among a great many who had been saying unpleasant thiugs about the canal, for a spirited reply. The Secretary alleged that Mr, Bigelow had only been on the Isthmus 28 hours and knew nothing of what he was writing about. However, that is more or less beside the mark. Poultney Bigelow’s article was no more or less severe than a good many others had been but lie was an author of some reputation and therefore a good man to make an example of. The Senate committee undertook to cross-question him as to bis sources of information and why he should dare to write anything against the canal. Now, being a friend of the President, it is not likely that Mr. Bigelow was actuated by any personal malice in the thiugs he wrote. And it has been proved a good many times that newspaper maghzine writers are not given to betraying their sources or information under compulsion. The Senate has been up against this sort of recalcitrance at least once in the past few years in the case of the Sugar Trust investigation. There it had two newspaper men, John Shriver and Chas. Edwards, whom it undertook to put on the rack and forco to divulge the names of their informants in certain matters they had written about. The writers balked and claimed that the things told them were as much privileged hs the. statements made professionally to a priest or a physician. The Senate certified them in contempt and they were constructively convicted but their trial and conviction was a farce and j they never saw the inside of a jail. Whether they were right or whether Mr. Bigelow was right in the things they published became a minor question beside the larger one of the right of a congressional committee to haul up any author and compel him to divulge the names of any people he has talked with in gathering material for an article. The committee has divided on party lines, Senator Gorman and Senator Simmons holding that it is unwise to push Mr Bigelow to extremes, while Senator Knox and his colleagues declare that he should be certified to the President of the Senate and published for contempt. Senator Gorman has taken the common sense view of the case whatever the law may be. For to single Mr. Bigelow out for punishment would be to make a martyr of him before the public and to freeze up any other witness the committee might want to examine. The Capitol is considerably stirred up over the affairs for it involves the whole question of the freedom of the press. It is not likely that it will have any serious cousequences for the writer, but it certainly has put the Senate Committee in an embarrassing position at the outset of its labors. t t t The appointment of Luke C.

Wright as first ambassador to Japan to succeed Loyd Griscom. is something of a surprise. Judge Wright is a Tennessee man and has had six years of hard work in the Philippines where he was sent as a member of the first McKinley commission. It will be recalled that the announcement of the commission was not hailed with any great enthusiasm at the time. Commissioner Taft was an unknown quantity. Luke Wright, while be had held the office of attorney general of Tennessee, was a Democrat little known outside his own state and was thought to have been thrown in merely to give the commission a bi-partiaan color. Henry Ide of Vermont was about equally well known. But as it proved, all three of these little kown men did excellent work. Commissioner Taft was eventually called to the War Department as Secretary. Judge Wright, after winning the affections and confidence of the natives, has now been made an ambassador, and Commissioner Ide is now governor general of the Philippines, which position he will hold for a time at least as an honor before coming home to enjoy a well earned rest.

The Keep Commission’s long expected report on the Department of Agriculture has been published and Secretary Wilson has made at least a partial reply. The report, as was surmised, discredits a good deal of the department’s work in crop reporting and advised changes in methods as well as the transfer of certain of the reports to the Census Office. The retort of Secretary Wilson is that the most of the commissions’ recommendations for improving the service had been put into force when the work of the Bureau of Statistics was reorganized and that as for transferring any of the reports to the Census Office, that is a matter for Congress to deal with, as it is fixed by law and out of the power of the Secretary. The whole matter stands just where it was before the ponderous and secretive commission took the department in hand and it is hard to see where any changes of importance has been recommended, still less to see how any changes can be put into effect till the whole matter is turned over to Congress.