Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1906 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

Political and General Gossip of the National Capital. From our special correspondent: Congressman Gillespie of Texas has certainly emerged into the limelight in even more startling fashion than did Congressman Littlefield a few years back. The quiet Texas lawyer stirred up a hornets nest that even he did not dream of when he launched the inquiry about the Pennsylvania’s control of the numerous subsidiary eastern lines. He says that, now he is in the fight he intends to follow it to a finish, and if this threat is made' good, there may be even more important results from his resolution of inquiry from the pending rate legislation. Or, more properly speaking, the inquiry may do a great deal to force the attention of Congress on the necessity for the very legislation that the President recommended. The reply of the Interstate Commerce Commission to the original inquiry as to the extent of the Pennsylvania’s control over the other coal roads, was just about what might have been expected under the circumstances. Nodody ever accused the chairman of the commission of being an extra strong personality. None of the work of the commission in the past decade has been remarkable, and in this case it did what might have been expected, replied to the resolution by sending to Congress merely the facts that were known to everyone interested and which had appeared in the annual report almost a year ago. Mr. Gillespie characterized the reply as an insult to Congress. It probably was not intended that way by the Commission, but it contained just enough of facts as to the practical control of half a dozen coal carrying roads by the Pennsylvania to warrant a thorough investigation if one ever was needed in the history of American railroading. It looks now as if the investigation were coming and it may have a decided effect on the fate of the Rate Bill in the Senate. Speaker Cannon would much rather have the investigation made by the Interstate Commerce Commission, or by the Department of Commerce and Labor, than by a committee of the House. But it is a certainty that an investigation of some sort will now be forced. It may have the effect of most government inquiries and end in smoke. But the average Citizen, who has been paying almost twice as much for his coal in the past six years as he did before, and who finds himself now threatened with another coal strike and famine prices, will agree that not only is an investigation needed, but that a remedy is needed at the back of the investigation. It looks as if the Pennsylvania had succeeded in doing within the law just what the Supreme Court enjoined the Great Northern from doing, and had effected a practical merger that was simply eating into the pocket not only of the coal consumer, but of the retail dealers and of the miners all over the coal producing and coal consuming region of the east, and also into the pocket of everybody that buys coal. Mr. Gillespie says that the roads have levied an unjust tax of $110,000,000 on the people of the eastern country, and the man on a small salary who has seen the money he intended to save for life insurance going out in additional coal bills each winter will agree that there is something wrong in the system that needs remedying, and the sooner there is a full investigation and a remedy applied the, better. The more the facts in relation to the coal trust, which is in reality the coal carrying roads, are brought to light, the more necessary drastic remedial legislation becomes apparent. It is likely that other lines beside the Pennsylvania will be brought into the inquiry, and the situation developed may do more to bring the Senate to terms over the Hepburn rate bill than was surmised when the inquiry was launched. t t t

The Navy Department never has been enthusiastic over the drastic punishment of dismissial that is the law in relation to hazing. Since the inquiry at Annapolis has developed and shown that the most of the three upper classes are slated for dismissal if the law is enforced, even the Secretary of the Navy has been willing to see the statute modified, and he' is now in conference with a number of prominent Congressmen with a view to having a new law passed that will recognize some distinction between different degrees of hazing. There is no question but that hazing is wrong in principle, and that it ought to be eradicated so far as boy nature will allow. But there is a wide

difference.between boyish pranks, that will annoy without seriously hurting the victim, and brutal hazing that seriously incapacitates its victim. Some of the pranks are no more serious than making a cadet get under the table during desert. Other forma are absolute brutality and consist in making the victim stand on his head till he faints, then reviving him with cold water and continuing the torture till the subject will not revive and has to be carried to the hospital by the first officer who happens to find him. An effort is now being made by Secretary Bonaparte to grade the punish, ment to fit the crime. It is also suggested that the President will be asked to intercede and pardon the eight caderts who have so far been dismissed from the Academy. But there is a serious question in law whether even a pardon from the President would be sufficient to reinstate those who have already been dismissed, and if they are permanently barred from the Academy, it would seem decided partiality to retain any of the others who have been proven guilty under the same law. But there is talk now of suspending the hazing trials althogether, and allowing the cadets who are now nominally under arrest to continue the full course at the Academy without even being brought to trial. »