People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1894 — Correspondence. [ARTICLE]

Correspondence.

FEOM WASHINGTON. An Interesting Batch of Newt From the Capitol. From our Regular Correspondent. Washington, April 20, ’94. Trouble is brewing in Washington for Coxey and his army, and those who haven't money enough to provide for themselves would better think twice before starting to join him. There are. daily conferences of officials, civil and military, which are surrounded by a mystery that bodes no good to the Coxeyites. It is impossible to get officials to say what they intend doing, but the impression is growing that Coxey’s army will not be allowed, as an organized body, to enter Washington. • e o It must not be supposed that the agreement to end the debate on the tariff bill as a whole next Tuesday means that all the long speeches will then be over. The agreement merely means that after that day the bill will be considered by items. There is no limit to the length of speeches that may be made upon a single item of the bill, except the inclination and physical capacity of the senator who makes it. So no one need be surprised to find that longer speeches will be made on some of the items than have been made in the so-called general debate. The House coinage committee this week considered Representative Meyer’s bill for the coinage of the seigniorage and the issue of 3 per cent, bonds, but did not arrive at a decision. Notwithstanding the statement of Mr. Meyer that the bill was endorsed by Secretary Carlisle and that it would certainly be signed by President Cleveland, if passed, there was no enthusiasm shown for the bill. A bit, or rather two bits, of ancient political history were brought up in the House this week while the diplomatic appropriation bill was under consideration. They concerned the political contributions of John Wanamaker and of Mr. Van Allen and the subsequent political preferment of those two gentlemen. Somehow nobody thought to ring the bell on the I. “chestnuts.” • A A Senator Smith's speech against the tariff bill was neither sensational nor specially eloquent, but it was plain to the point of bluntness and left no doubt in the minds of his hearers that he was willing to go as far as Senator Hill in his efforts to defeat the bill. He threw this bomb into the camp of the Democratic free traders: “The Democratic party ' is not a free trade party, and the mere fact that an insignificant number of free trade theorists have ingrafted themselves upon it cannot make it so. ,‘Taxes collected at the custom houses have been the chief source of Federal revenue, and such they must continue to be.’ Nor can the utterance of a congressional convention in Missouri, nor the assertion of its candidate that an income tax is ‘just right,’ con(trovert a principle declared by Thomas Jefferson and confirmed by every national convention since the organization of the party.” Mr. Smith also served notice on the Democrats of the South that they were driving the Democrats of the North into the Republican party and that it will be, in his opinion, impossible to pass the tariff bill as it ‘now stands. e • • Whether the action of the House in adopting a rule authorizing the counting of a quorum was a triumph for Hon. John Randolph Tucker, of Virginia, who advocated its adoption by the House in 1880; for Senator Hill, who put the rule into prac-

of the House daring the present session, the Democrats having demonstrated their inability to keep a quorum of their own hand to do business, and its adoption was merely a bit of applied common sense, and it was really surprising that as many as 47 Democrats should have been willing, under the circumstances, to go on record against the rule. • • • The Senate committee on Territories has practically agreed to favorably report the bill for the admission of Utah. The bill will, it is said, at the request of Democrats who did not care to take any chances as to the Senators elected, provide for a constitutional convention, the members of which shall not be elected until after the congressional elections next fall, and shall not sit until next spring. This is to make it certain that the new Senators cannot be elected until after the end of the»present Congress. • • • It is now regarded as good as settled that the fate of the income tax depends on the votes of Republican Senators. If the Republicans vote as they think this would mean that the income tax would be struck out of the bill, but they may vote to keep it in the bill for the purpose of forcing Democratic Senators who oppose it to vote against the entire bill.