People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1894 — FROM WASHINGTON. [ARTICLE]

FROM WASHINGTON.

An Interesting Batch of Xews From the Capitol. From our Regular Correspondent. Washington, June 15, '94. President Havemeyer, of the sugar trust, is by long odds the most interesting and important witness who has yet testified before the senate investigating committee. While not volun teering any information, Mr Havemeyer willingly answered all the questions asked, except as to the total amount contributed for political purposes by the sugar trust. There he drew the line and refused to answer questions asked him. He admitted that the sugar trust was organized to control the price of sugar and that its $35,000,000 of profits during the last three years was proof of its success; that he came to Washington to control the legislation of congress on sugar, but had not got all he asked for in the sugar schedule of the tariff bill; that the sugar trust made liberal contributions to the political parties which controlled the states in which it does business, and that all other trusts brought protection by the same method; that he had conferences with Secretary Carlisle and Senators Brice, Smith, Gorman, Jones, Vest, Caffrey, Camden and Hill, while the sugar schedule was being ing considered, and that Hill was lhe only one he could not convince; that the present sugar schedule, if it became a law, would increase the price of sugar at least one cent a pound. The most surprising statement made by Mr. Havemeyer was that he had never seen President Cleveland.

• • • No time has yet been set for taking a vote on the tariff bill, but Senator Harris, it is said, refused an offer of Senator Aidrich to make it June 25, because he thought it could be reached sooner. The general impression is that the bill will be passed sometime during the week beginning on that date, whether there is any agreement or not. The senators are as tired of the discussion as the public is. • • • Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, never makes a speech that is not overflowing with apt quotations from prominent authors. In a short speech on as prosaic a subject as the tariff he managed to include quotations from Milton, Edmund Burke, Shakspeare, Macauley, Gibbons, Byron and and the Bible. He is very proud of his ability in this line, which is not approached by any other senator.

CO* Indications are becoming plen tiful that the politicians believe silver will be one of the most important issues in the next na tional campaign. One of the latest is a bill introduced by Senator Squire, of Washington, with this title: ‘'To provide for the regulated free coinage of silver bullion into standard dollars, and for the preservation of the parity of value of the various kinds of coined money of the United States.” The bill makes it compulsory upon the mints to receive bullion in amounts over 8100 in value and to coin it, paying to the owner in standard silver dollars the commercial value of the bullion upon the day it is delivered, the difference, if any, to be retained by the government as a reserve fund to maintain the value of the silver coined. Coinage under this law is not to exceed £4,000,000 a month, and is to cease when the total amouut of lawful money in circulation reaches £4O per capita. Mr. Squire calls his bill a compromise, but many people regard it as an attempt to revive the old Sherman law under another name and with a little more red tape. • • • The senate committee on the existing industrial depression might as well never have been

created, so far as the accomp lishment of anything beneficial is concerned. It has decided that the resolution under which the committee is acting gave it no power to send for persons and papers and that it could only ask and receive such communications or testimony as might be voluntarily presented. At present the committee only asks for statements in writing, but it promises to set a time for personal hearings. But inasmuch as those who appear before the committee will have to do at their own expense, and that no official stenographer has been provided to record what may be said it is not probable that there will be many applicants for personal hearings. Senator Kyle, chairman of the committee on education and labor, procured Coxey and Browne a hearing before that committee, they having declined to appear before the special committee because of the absence of a stenographer. Coxey still says that he intends to keep the army of the commonweal here until Congress acts upon his bills, no matter how long that may be. He will make a lecture tour, in company with Carl Browne, in order to raise money to support the men and to enlist recruits.

• • • Although it is only fifteen days to the close of the fiscal year not a single one of the regular appropriation bills has become a law and there is no prospect that any of them will before that time. A joint resolution extending the old appropriations will have to be adopted by the house and senate. Otherwise the wheels of the government would cease to revolve July 1.