Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 February 1890 — NATIONAL CONGRESS. [ARTICLE]

NATIONAL CONGRESS.

The Senate on the 10th transacted routine business. Among the petitions presented and referred was one from the Indianapolis Board of Trade baking for the repeal of the interstate commerce act; also, petitions from Mississippi and Georgia praying for the passage of a national law to seeure the right of suffrage, and for the enforcement of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution. The House bill appropriating $60,000 for the Marion Soldiers’ Home was passed. The Alabama bill was considered. The House Committee on the 11th decided by a party vote in favor of unseating Pendleton, Democrat, and seating Atkinson, Republican, from the First West Virginia district. The Senate on the 11th passed a bill for the relief of certain settlers. The Oklahoma territorial bill was considered as was also the Blair eduoational bill. Mr. Hoar introduced a bill to prescribe!, in part, the manner of the eieotioo of members of Congress, and it was referred to the com mittee on privileges and elections. It provides that in all States in the Union representatives to Congress shall be elected in and for the districts now prescribed by' law until the apportionment of Representatives shall be made by Congress according to the census to be taken in 1890, any law of such State hereafter to be passed to the con tarary notwithstanding, Mr. Hoar stated that a fear had been expressed in various quarters that there would be an attempt to make new representative dis triota, to take effect at the" next election, and to gerrymander some States in the interest of one or the other political party, before the next census. The bill proposed he said, in the interest of justice, to apply to all the States the rule, under the constitutional power given to Congress, to prestribe and alter the mode of electing Representatives, that all the eleotions of Representatives for the next Congress, unless the new apportionment be previously made, shall take place in existing districts.

Senator Edmunds, Tuesday, introduced a bill for a public school system in Utah. It takes the whole oontrol of the schools out of the hands of the Mormons. Instruction is to be given in temperance, manners and morals in addition to the usual public school studies. No sectarian or denominational books shall be used or sectarian doctrines taught. A tax of 3 mills upen each dollar of taxable property shall be levied as a special fund forsohool purposes. The House considered the rules on the 12th. The Senate On the 12th adopted a resolution congratulating the people of Brazil on the establishment of a republic. A rfisolu tion was adopted inviting the King of the Hawaiian Islands to send a delegate to the Pan American Congress. The House devoted both day and night to discussion of the rules. The house resumed consideration of tho rules. Mr. Bynum, of Indiana, offered an amendment providing that when any bill for the increase of pensions or for granting pensions, not formerly provided for, is pending, it shall be in order to 6ffer an amendment providing by taxation for the payment thereof. The amendment was rejected, after a warm debate, by ayes 96, to nays, 164. At 5 o’clock the previous question was ordered, and the rules adopt ed by ayes 161,*iays 145. The Senate on the 14th passed bills as follows: For the relief of sailors in the Samoan disaster; appropriating $25,000 for the relief of the Sioux Indians at Devil’s Lake Agency; providing for an Assistant Secretory of War, with a salary ot HfiOO-, to refund to the State of West Virginia the money paid to officers of the 133 d Regiment of West Virginia militia for services rendered during the rebellion; appropriating $125,000 for a Unitod States revenue cutter for services on the Pacific coast; to prevent the obstruction of navigable waters; to prevent the introduction of contagious diseases from one State to another; concurrent resolution to invite iaterßationalar filtration as to differences between nations; to inorease the endowment of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural College. Altogether there were sixty bills passed.