Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1902 — WEEK’S DOINGS IN CONGRESS [ARTICLE]

WEEK’S DOINGS IN CONGRESS

Business Transacted by the House and Senate in the National Capital. SENATORS DISCUSS THE CANAL Mr. Morgan Contends for the Nicaragua Route, White Mr. Hanna Holds That the Panama Course Is the Shorter and Better. Tuesday, June 3. The Senate passed the Philippine bill and took up the canal bill. The House resolution thanking Secretary of State Hay for his McKinley memorial address was agreed to. The executive session before adjournment was brief. In the House consideration of the anti-anarchy bill was begun. The House committee reported a substitute for the Senate measure. Mr. Ray (N. Y.), chairman of the judiciary committee, who was in charge of the bill, argued that the Senate bill was unconstitutional. Mr. Latham (Texas), supported the feature of the bill to exclude anarchists, but opposed that making it a particular offense to kill the President or anyone in the line of the Presidential succession. He argued that every man was equal before the law, and that existing laws were ample to punish the killing or attempted killing of the President. The conference report upon the rivers and harbors bill was agreed to. Wednesday, June 4. In the senate the bill authorizing the promotion and retirement of tlae present senior major general of the army, Major General John R. Brooke, was passed, as was a bill providing that the Postmaster General may extend free delivery to cities of 5,000 inhabitants or $5,000 gross income, instead of 10,000 inhabitants, as at present. A joint resolution empowering the state of Minnesota to file selections of indemnity school lands in Minnesota otherwise undisposed of, after the survey thereof in the field and prior to the approval and filing of the plat of survey thereof, was approved. Senator Morgan occupied the rest of the day with a speech on the canal bill. After a brief executive session the Senate adjourned. The debate on the anti-anarchy bill continued all day in the House. It was without sensational features, being confined almost entirely to the legal and constitutional phases of the question. Mr. Jenkins (Wis.) and Mr. Parker (N. J.) contended that the bill did not go far enough; that the killing of the President should be made punishable by death without any limitation whatever. Mr. Powers (Mass.) and Mr. Nevin (Ohio), the other two speakers, supported the measure as it came from the committee. The resolution calling upon the Secretary of War for a detailed statement of the expenditures made under the direction of General Wood during k's administration as governor general of Cuba was laid upon the table by a vote of 110 to 78. Thursday, June 5. The senate passed the military appropriation bill, providing for extensive improvements at West Point, and devoted the rest of the day to debate upon the canal bill. The customary executive session preceded adjournment. In the house the general debate on the anti-anarchy bill was ended except for two speeches. Mr. Littlefield (Me.) will make the closing argument in support of the measure. The debate was devoted to legal arguments, the speakers being Messrs. Sibley (Pa.), DeArmond (Mo.), Williams (Miss.), Wooten (Tex.), McDermott (N. J.), Loud (Cal.), Crumpacker (Ind.), Maddox (Ga.), Ball (Tex.) and Clark (Mo.). In closing his speech Mr. Sibley said: “In the strength of our purpose and endowed with the courage of our convictions, we will send to anarchy and all her brood the message that Garfield once delivered, when, upon the death of Lincoln, this nation was plunged in panic and despair, ‘God reigns, and the government at Washington still lives.’ ” Friday, June 6. In the senate the day was mainly occupied by debate upon the canal bill, a bill to pay $1,042 to Frank C Darling of Minnesota for damages done by the Sioux Indians, and a large number of private pension bills were passed. General debate on the anti-anarchy bill was closed in the house. The incident of the day was a speech by Mr. Richardson, an Alabama Democrat, condemning the President in severe terms for the references in his Memorial day oration at Arlington to the epithets applied to Lincoln and Grant during the civil war and for his illusions to lynchings. He declared the

President's remarks vloiated the proprieties of the occasion. Mr. Littlefield made a legal argument of an hour and a half in closing the debate on the bllL The section of the Senate bill providing a bodyguard for the President was stricken from the Senate bill as a precaution in case the House substitute failed. An effort was made to strike from the first section of the substitute the words limiting the crime of killing the President to the President in his official capacity, but the motion was lost, 63 to 89. Only one section had been disposed of when the house adjourned. By a vote of 100 to 72, cast on strict party lines, the resolution requesting information as to salary or other conpensation paid to General Wood during the occupation of Cuba was laid on uie table. Saturday, June 7. At the conclusion of routine bnsiness. Mr. Depew (N. Y.) addressed the senate in advocacy of the bill appropriating $10,000,000 for the purchase of 2,000,000 acres of land for a national forest reserve in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. Mr. Depew said the project was favored by President Roosevelt and by the secretary of agriculture, and federal action was justified fully by public necessity. No action was taken. The senate then began the consideration of the measure commonly known as the London dock charges bill. Mr. Nelson (Rep., Minn.), in support of the bill, said the charges made at the London docks against American flour, principally, were a discrimination against the United States. “God deliver us from trusts,” dramatically exclaimed Mr. Nelson, in response to a question by Mr. Macumber as to what effect a steamship trust would have on freight rates. The bill was then laid aside. Bills were passed as follows: To ratify act No. 65 of the Twenty-first Arkansas legislature, declaring the Osage river to be not a navigable stream above the point where the line between the counties of Benton and St. Clair, Missouri, crosses the river. At 2 o’clock consideration of the isthmian canal project was resumed. Mr. Mitchell (Ore.) addressed the senate in continuation of his speech, begun Thursday, in support of the Nicaragua route. After a brief executive session the senate at 4:42 adjourned. In the house, Mr. Cannon, chairman of the committee on appropriations, asked unanimous consent to consider a resolution to authorize the conferees on the sundry civil appropriation bill to insert in that bill the necessary appropriations authorized by the omnibus public building bill. He explained that about $6,000,000 should be appropriated in the sundry civil bill on account of the omnibus act which was signed Friday. There was no objection and the resolution was adopted. The anti-anarchy bill took up the rest of the day.