Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1888 — WASHINGTON NOTES. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON NOTES.

The special committee which has been in vestigating the It wading strike has returned. Chairman Tillman says the committee finds itself restricted as to the scope of inquiry, as only the Federal features of the subject can be presented to Congress. He says the workers in the anthracite regions were in a terrible demoralized condition. There are twice as many men as there are places, and all are working at starvation wages. The report will especially urge that the State of Pennsylvania remove the poll tax on laborers, which the committee found to be ovar $4 per head, while the valuable coal lands are taxed merely as agricultural lands at $4 to $5 an acre. la the matter of the complaint of George H. Bice, of Marietta, 0., against various railroads for discriminations in rates in favor of the Standard Oil Company, the Interstate Commerce Commission ordered the Louisville 4 Nashville and St. Louis, Iron Mountain A Southern, which had so discriminated, ft> cease, and to furnish complainant the same accommodations and same rates as it does the Standard Company. According to the latest returns received at the War Department the total nnmber of men in the United States available for military duty is 8,021,605, exclusive of those in the regular army. Of this number 100,837 are

enrolled in the militia forces of the various States and Territories. ... The California wool-growers have sent to the House of Representatives resolutions stating that a reduction of the duty on wool woulfl kill their business. The bill prohibiting the transmission through the mails of newspapers, containing lottery advertisements has been killed by the House committee. The House Committee on Pensions have agreed to the Senate bill increasing to S3O per month the pension for total deafness. No report in the Turpie case is expected for some time.