Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1906 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

Political and General Gossip of the National Capital. From our Special Correspondent: “Uncle Joseph” has come to the front with an explanation. He says that anyone who thinks he was hinting at tariff revision in his remarks out west tne other day has another think coming and had better get it to operating quick. Tariff revision will come, he says in his usual but kindly manner. It will come when he is ready for it and not before. And that will not be at the present session. Mr. Cannon intimates that when the subject of tariff revision is broached there will be all sorts of people and parties to be heard from and that partial revision is out of the question. When the tariff is revised at all it will have to be as a whole which probably is true, and he does not propose to have anyone toying with the throttle while he can make any sort of a pretense at being busy elsewhere. Meanwhile Mr. Rainey of Illinois took occasion the other day to read the stand pat Republicans a lecture on that very subject. He aroused a good deal of amusement and some indignation in the process. He said that American watches were being sold abroad so cheap that they were bought on the other side, shipped back to the United States to be sold a second time. He had a number of watches in his various pockets to prove the assertion. He also spoke of the Watch Trust. This brought out a protest from Mr. Gardner of Massachusetts who said he was a stockholder in j one of the largest watch cotn- | pauies and he knew of no such thing as a w.tch trust. Mr. Rainey raised a laugh by saying Mr. Gardner would probably have a chance to explain his negative information before the Committee on ways and means. Mr. Rainey added that while there was evidently no such thing as a watch trust the number of employees in ‘the watch factories had greatly ini creased in the past decade, and there were now in the countryonly IB watcli companies against twenty-seven in IHHO fle said that there were fifteen per cent more men employed in the factories than in 1880 but that there were 600 per cent more women and 200 per cent more children. He said that this alone was a state of thine.-, world enj quiring into. I None the less there is outgoing to be any tariff discuseiou at this | session. Mr. Davidson’s arrangements for having the Ways and j Means Committee sit during the summer to take testimony will ■ probably satisfy the conscience of the majority and quiet the in- ! quiries of the constituents. And j the tariff will be allowed to drift till there is a Democratic House or till the House can stave off the question no longer. t t t The rate situation is about as clear as it has been in the past fortnight. That is about as clear as the wake of a cattle stampede on a dusty day. No one dares oppose the legislation, but the railroads are determined to have the rate bill shaped to suit their ends, and those ends of course will be served by any provision for a court review that will enable them to take the unlucky shipper into court and w ear him out in litigation. Some of the supposed opposition Senators have come out so strongly for the rate bill since the incorporation of a review amendment seems assured, that one is tempted to wonder whether after all that w-as not the thing they were waiting for and that a loophole being once assured, they were willing to overwhelm the Hepburn bill with all sorts of drastic provisions knowing quite well from the start that they would

- never be apt to get in the way of the railroads. t t t The question of fortifying the Panama canal has come up again. The General Staff got suddenly busy last week and that they had a scheme of fortifications already to submit to Congress. As to the right of this country to fortify the canal, there *>an be very little queston. The prohibition in the Clayton-Bulwer treaty against fortifications was not mentioned in the HayPauncefote treaty and it is assumed by tbo%e interested that the silence gives consent. At the same time the War Department has been incommunication with the State Department and it has been decided to lay the matter before Congress to get a ruling on the point. t t t The story of why Bellamy Stoier was recalled as Ambassador from Austria, is going the rounds in official circles and causing some quiet amusement from the fact that M*e. Storer seems to have been at the bottom of it. According to reports, Mrs. Storer was interested in having Archbishop Ireland appointed as a second cardinal for the United States. The matter came to the point where a word from the President would have secured the appointment, but he, very naturally, declined to speak the word although Archbishop Ireland is one of his good friends and the President has said informally that he would be glad of anything good that could happen to him. None the less Mrs. Storer was affronted and took occasion to make trouble between Ambassador Storer and the Administration, so that Mr. Storer finally broke off diplomatic relations with the State Department, which paid him the wages on which he was erroneously supposed to live. The crisis became so acute about a month ago that the President was forced to write to him to change his course or resign. He resigned, and now he and Mrs. Storer are free to live in Paris, which they say they will do.