Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1889 — WASHINGTON NOTES. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON NOTES.

The treasury surplus has been steadily increasing for several days past. It now amounts to $50,200,000, or $5,000,000 more than it was ten days’ ago. This increase is due to the great excess of receipts over disbursements since the first of the month. The receipts to date aggregate $23.200,( 00, while the expenditures during the same period amount to a little over $12,000,000, including about $2,000,000 paid out on account of pensions. Until recently the and expenditures have been pretty well balanced by the purchase of bonds, but this method of applying the surplus has been considerably hampered of late by the light offerings. The purchases have been confined to four-and-a-half per cent, bonds, but this is partly due to the high price asked for the four per cents. Secretary Windom has announced his purpose of continuing for the present, at least, the system of purchasing adopted by his predecessor, and that he would willingly increase the purchases if the offers permitted it. He has been urged to resume the purchase of four per cents, as a more profitable use of the surplus than the purchase ot four-and-a-half per cents. He declines, however, to make known his views on this subject beyond the statement that his policy ar to the fours must be determined by his treatment of the offers. The succession to the vacancy caused by the death of Judge Matthews is already being discussed, there being two programs laid out by those who talk. One is that Judge Gresham, now Judge of |he circuit comprising the States of Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, will be nominated for Associate Justice. He would in turn be succeeded by Judge W. A. Woods, leaving a vacancy to be filled in the District of Indiana. The other program includes the transfer of Attorney General Miller tb the Supreme Bench, of Secretary Nobfle to the head of the Department of Justice and of Assistant Postmaster General Clarkson to the Interior Department. The proclamation opening up Oklahoma Territory to settlement was issued on the 23d, by President Harrisop. It will embrace about 1,800.600 acres of land. The country affected by the E reclamation is bounded on the South y the Canadian river, along that river in a northwestern direction for some distance, and thence due east to a point near the Pawnee reservation; thence south to the Cimarron river, along that river to the Indian meridian, thence due south along thalrmeridian until the Canadian river, the starting point, is reached. President Harrison told a friend that the reason he did not send more nominations to the Senate was because he had been keuUro busy listening to delegations and other callers in behalf of applicants for office that he had no opportunity to consider the cases that had been presented As soon as the crowd and he can find more time to ..devote to the consideration of the different applications he will make the appointments mpre rapidly.

The good people of the Church of the Covenant thought it would be a great card for them to rent a pew to the President, but it turns out to have been a nuisance, for public curiosity to see him is so great that the church is crowded every Sabbath morning with strangers and citizens of Washington who would, not enter the sanctuary for any othqr reason. The throng has become so great that the trustees of the church are coinpelled to have policemen to keep order and prevent strangers from crowding into pews where they do not belong. Senator Evarts had a long interview with the President, which caused a.re‘vival of the story that he will be appointed minister to England. It is the general opinion that Chauncey M. Depew has declined the,appointment, although no positive information of it can be obtained at the White House. The Treasury Department decided, Friday, that importations of broken wool tops are dutiable at 60 cents per pound as “tops” and not at 10 cents a pound as “waste.” It is suspected that the tops are broker to resemble waste, in order to evade the higher rate of duty imposed.upon “tops.” Justice Gray, of the Supreme Court, aged sixty-two, is to be married to Miss Jennette, daughter of Associate Justice Stanley Matthews. Her * age 11 is but thirty. 1 Offensive partisanship will be regarded es a good cause for removals of postmasters, so it is stated by Assistant Secretary Clarkson.