People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 January 1894 — FROM WASHINGTON. [ARTICLE]

FROM WASHINGTON.

An Interesting Batch or News From the Capitol. From our Regular Correspondent. Washington, Jan., 19, ’94. That $50,000,000 bond issue is the principle topic of conversation in Washington just now. Republicans as a rule are pleased, because they have predicted from the first that the administration would have to do it, and everybody knows how human it is to take pleaure in firing “I told you so” at somebody. Democrats are very much divided upon the subject, but as it is the act of a Democratic administration they are a little shy in expressing, for publication, opinions about it, although such men as Bland, of Missouri, and Bailey, of Texas, do not hesitate to condemn it in strongest terms. The Populists are, of course, to a man opposed to it, believing that it might easily have been obviated by passing Mr. Bland’s bill, which has been approved by a majority of the house committee on coinage, providing for the immediate issuing of silver certificates to the value of the seigniorage in the treasury, a bill which it has been understood was approved by Secretary Carlisle. What, if any, action will be taken by congress is at this time problematical. There will be no chance to get the matter before the house in any shape until after the tariff bill is disposed of, on the 29th, of this month. Secretary Carlisle says he did not take this action until he was obliged by the scarcity of available cash in the treasury to do so, and that he will only sell a sufficient number of bonds to meet present necessities, so as to give congress a chance to legislate on the subject.

The house ways and means struck its first tariff snag when the house voted down its amendments to the Wilson bill, postponing the time for the free wool clause of the bill to take effect, and adopted an amendment making the free wool clause take effect the day the bill becomes a law. The five minute debate on the bill, which will continue during next week, has been peppery and interesting, although in the main good-na-tured. One of the noteworthy features has been the large number of members who have declared themselves out and out free traders. There has been nothing, so far, to indicate that the bill will be radically by the house. A close fight is expected when the sugar clause is reached; also when the attempt is made, against the decision of the ways and means committee to report it in a separate bill, to attach the income tax to the tariff bill as an amendment.

The fact seems to have been overlooked that it was the votes of the three Populist senators that defeated the confirmation of Mr. Hornblower to the supreme court. Had they voted in favor of the confirmation the senate would have been a tie, and there is little doubt that Vice President Stevenson w r ould have cast the deciding vote for confirmation, although he is not supposed to be on the best terms with President Cleveland. He is too politic to have taken the responsibility of publicly antagonizing Mr. Cleveland when he had no end, either political or personal, to serve by doing it.

Representative Hartman, of Montana, made the most unparliamentary reference to the president that has been made at this session, on the floor of either house or senate, when he said: “The chairman of the w T ays and means committee predicted at the extra session that the repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman law would relieve the country of its financial depression, and he is making the same prediction now in regard to the tariff bill. Is he a Democratic prophet, or the son of a prophet, or only the mouth-piece of the stuffed prophet of Buzzard’s Bay?”

Representative Holman, the “ex-watch-dog of the treasury,” has opened his batteries against any further appropriations for increasing the navy, which he declares to be already too large for safety. Brother Holman is apparently wasting his ammunition, as the condition of Uncle Sam’s cash box is an unanswerable argument against all appropriations that are not absolutely necessfary, and congress has yet to legislate to provide the money necessary to meet them,

Senator Washburn is authority for the statement that the antioption bill will soon be again introduced in the house by Representative Hatch, as a revenue, instead of a prohibitory measure. That is, the tax on stock, grain and other speculative transactions is to be made low enough to produce a revenue, instead of being put so high as to prohibit those transactions, as it was in the old bill. It remains to be seen how those who supported the old bill because of its prohibitory nature will regard the new one. Senator Washburn and Representative Hatch are confident that the new bill will become a law.