People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 March 1894 — FROM WASHINGTON. [ARTICLE]

FROM WASHINGTON.

An Interesting Batch of New* From the Capitol. From our Regular Correspondent. Washington, Meh. 16, ’94. “President Cleveland will not veto the Bland bill; neither will he sign it. He will allow it to become a law without his signature.” These remarks were addressed to a prominent silver man in Congress by a Democratic senator, who had just come from a conference with Mr. Cleveland at the White House, and were not intended for publication. If President Cleveland does not veto the Bland bill it will not indicate that he has changed his mind about silver, but merely that he has for once pushed aside his own will and judgment in deference to the large number of Democrats who supported the bill in the house and senate, and who have assured him that a veto of the bill would cost his party many seats in Congress that they now hold. The silver men who know Mr. Cleveland’s antipathy towards any legislation favoring the white metal will not believe the danger of a veto is over until the ten days from its final passage, requisite to make it a law without presidential signature, shall have elapsed. If they could get as big a percentage of the vote in the house as the bill received in the senate they could safely defy a veto, because they could then pass the bill over it.

There is nothing in sight to indicate when the tariff bill will be reported to the senate, although it is expected that it will be reported next week sometime. It must be confessed, however, that the expectation is based upon nothing more tangible than the belief that there will be no excuse for withholding it longer than that. The finance committee has a bad attack of that old senate complaint, concealment fever, and this week adopted a resolution pledging every member of the committee to secrecy as to what was done at the committee meetings. A witty Senator, not a member of that committee, said of the resolution: “It was not adopted because the committee is doing anything that it objects to being known, but that it was doing nothing and did not want that known.”

Notwithstanding occasional sharp criticisms on and off the floor, the house is overwhelming in favor of maintaining the interstate commerce commission. Out of 104 members present when Representative Morse, of Mass., moved to strike out the sundry civil bill the item making an appropriation for the commission, only five voted for the motion. During the debate on that motion it was made apparent that in the opinion of some members it was n@t the law which was to be blamed for decisions that have been made against the commission, but the inability of the commission to employ as able and skillful lawyers to uphold the law as the railroads did to defeat it.

The sugar question is giving the senators considerable trouble in its various phases. The senate started the week by killing Senator Peffer’s resolution for investigating the charges against senators for speculating in stock of the sugar trust, by deciding on a vote of 33 to 27 to lay it on the table. That action, which was a surprise to most people, and which is not generally re-' garded as a wise way to refute such charges, has been the oasis of endless gossip, not ail ol it of a complimentary nature. The sugar, who had been instrumental in getting the clause repealing the reciprocity clause of the McKinley law inserted in the tariff by the house ways and means committee, and also in getting the clause abrogating the commercial treaty with

Hawaii, under which sugar from thing to disturb the sugar men was the discovery that there was an unexpectedly large number of senators who will not vote to abrogate the Hawaiian treaty, not because of any opposition to American sugar interests, but because they are not willing to give up privileges enjoyed by the United States under that treaty. Senator Vest, a member of the finance committee, and other Democratic senators take issue with Senator Voorhees and claim that a repeal of the reciprocity law will abrogate all treaties made under it. The fact that two-thirds of the foreign sugar that comes to this country comes in free under treaties, regardless of the tariff, has apparently just begun to be realized by many people. The best sugar men are talking of testing in the courts the right of Congress to repeal the sugar bounty law, inasmuch as it was enacted for a specified number of years. • • • The trial of Miss Madeline Pollard against Representative Breckenridge, of Kentucky, for breach of promise of marriage, which has now been going on a week, is proving a dangerous rival to Congress, so far as public interest is concerned. • • • The house committee on the election of president and vicepresident will probably report favorably a joint resolution for a constitutional amendment for the election of senators by the people.