Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 102, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1905 — WASHINGTON GOSSIP [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WASHINGTON GOSSIP

According to a careful estimate made by the Department of Agriculture, a loss of $700,000,000 Is caused to American farmers every year by Insects. Tbe losses on plant products of the soil, both In their growing and in their stored shite, exceed the entire expenditures of the national government, including the pension roll and the maintenance of the army and navy. After giving a long list of destructive pests the department says: “Wheat suffers most from insect depredations. The Hessian fly. the chinch bug and the grain plant louse work Annual havoc amounting to 5 per cent of the crop. The Hessian fly is distinctly a wheat pest. Inflicting a damage in Indiana and Illinois alone last yeai of $24,000,000. Twenty per cent of the planted area of Michigan wag abandoned because of it and the loss iu the United States during a single 'season has been estimated at $100,000,000.”

There is brewing the biggesf kind of a scandal that will perhaps Insinuate itself into the navy, war and interior departments because of the way persons are committed to the St. Elizabeth Home as insane without having been so adjudged by a court of competent jurisdiction. It has been the habit in the Army and Navy Departments to commit persons there who were supposed to be insane. Tills was done on tbe certificate of the army and navy surgeons, none of whom has qualified a% an expert on mental diseases. Thousands, it was asserted, have thus been committed In like manner from the soldiers’ homes throughout the union. In the latter case it is alleged that tbe institution collects tbe pensions averaging S2O per month per person and collected besides from the government S2O per person for tbe keep of the inmates.

Representatives of the State Department, the Department of Justice, and the Immigration Bureau, whom the President appointed to recommend changes in the laws relative to naturalization, are reported to have decided to recommend several most important amendments of the law. They will propose, it is said, that naturalization be granted by the higher courts only, instead of by any court of record; that the requirements for applicants for citizenship shall be uniform throughout the country; and that the certificates shall be alsp uniform and printed on distinctive paper. Other changes* designed to give greater publicity to applications for naturalization, to give longer notice before an application Is acted upon, to allow the government to be represented, to prohibit naturalization just before an election, and similar safeguards of citizenship are under consideration.

Dr. Theodore S. Palmer of the government’s biological survey Is the guardian of all the game of the United States. He knows every quail covert in the country; he can number thi herds of elk in tbe Western mountains, and he knows every runway of the deer of the Adirondacks. This physi-cian-naturalist provides for the protection of the game in Uncle Sam’s preserves, and sees to it that the poacher shall not escape punishment. The doctrine of states’ rights bars government action in the matter of lawmaking for any sections of the country save territories, the national parks and the forest reserves, but this fact does not prevent Dr. Palmer from being the adviser in chief of nearly every body of legislators in the land when tbs game laws stand in need of revision.

John Hyde, chief of the bureau of statistics In the Department of Agriculture, resigned, declaring that the cotton growers had organized to fore® him out of the department and that his health was.too poor to enable him to continue the struggle. Secretary Wilson said that Mr. Hyde has not been Implicated in any manner In th® irregularities that resulted lu the dismissal of Edwin S. Holmes, the associate statistician, charged with being guilty of giving to brokers advance figures of cotton crop statistics. Hyde’s letter of resignation was almost sensational.

The War Department has invited bids for the building of more than twelve hundred miles of railroads in the Philippine Islands. The bidders must be citizens or corporations of the United States or the Philippine®. Eight hundred and thirty-three mile® of the railroads will be In the Island of Luzon. The right to operate telegraph lines along the routes will b® reserved by the government.

President Roosevelt baa directed • milder and more discriminating enforcement of the Chinese exclusion act, to tbe end that Chinese who am not of the prohibited classes may receive as courteous treatment as the citizens of other nations. Resentment in China against tbe United States because of this act and the methods of its enforcement is taking the form of an organised boycott in Chinese cities against American goods.