The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1874-02-24

III bAO Jus VI lOPACoODNoNANO LO0"O 0aA
the discussion of the army appropriation
bill, the question Of an appropriation of $780,
600 for the use of a preparation to preserve
wooden and cotton fabrics from mildew
being before the house, Mr.. Cox said:
1 move to strike out of the bill $4,000" and
insert aS25, 900" in line 12O. Before L come
to that, may 1 refer to the report of Quarter
master Bingham, OF Dec. 80, 1872? This re-
! port shows that then we had SO, 4S5, S2l.27 in
| wooden clothing and tents-mostly the
clude the forty-two thousand blankets,
worth S12S, 900. Nor did this in
clude coats, jackets, trousers, flannel sacks.
| blankets, goods made up and not made up.
These items run into the millions, and the
moths run into them. lLaughter.l Here
| are 5000. 900 worth of coats, jackets, and
trousers. Nearly eight hundred thousand
OF these articles of apparel tor an army OF
| thirty thousand, Our appropriation IS a
dollar and sixty-six and two-thirds cents
| per soldier-not per month. Omlttlng the
| wooden blankets and mounted great coats"
for the cavalry, 1 supposed. and the sky
blue kerseys," there is a splendid objective
/ point for the army of moths, which no great
General of that corps should omit to attack,
if Feeling well. Did the moths fail? If they
did, what need of this appropriation? In
| this lisS we have at least one million and a
| quarter yards of flannel not made up. We
| have millions of dollars of this peculiar
wooden property not yet made up into uni
forms. 1t is subject To the attack OF the
moth. A large part of this Is still on hand,
either in uniform or otherwise. The gen.
| tleman confesses to seven millions.
| Now, according to the report of the quart
ermaster-general Just referred to. there
were $3.50. 600 appropriated in a couple OF
| years past for a peculiar kind of process,
which is said to prevent moths getting into
this cloth and clothing. The Quartermas-
ter-general in this report asks this congress
this year for 500, 900; stating the amount of
motheaten clothes sold at the Government
depots during the past three years as over a
million and a half of dollars. Mr.. Cox said:
II motheaten clothes bring so much, what
is the rest, the unmotheaten, worth! VINO
buys the motheaten clothes and cloth? Who
| Judges of the extent and damage OF the in
nocent and hungry moth? Where are the
/ expert contractors and tailors? / pass
this by, to insist on the practical
question, why do we keep such a lot OF
| clothing on hand to feed moths? This is
| not a political conundrum. Why, II there is
so much clothing on hand, does the quarter
master say that the appropriation for cloth
ing for the past fiscal year was 100000?
Why were the expenditures on the account
of clothing and equipage during the same
period SS5S, 412.07?
THE PARTY MOTH.
\ MI. w uCoICI@4 COllO W doh IL SOAAOo6oO
a question. Has he studied the history OF
the party moth? 1t has fed on his party,
and no chemical process has yet been in
vented, 1 believe, to stay its ravages.
CLaughter,I
Mr.. Cox-Io omitted, as the house will see,
out of Difference to the majority and their
| feelings, to draw any partisan or political
lesson out of these moths and their preda-
tory habits. [Laughter.l have material,
however, for a speech OF an hour and a quar-
ter on that point. If the gentleman will al
low me, 1 will say it is mostly in connection
with the administration. Laughter.
And, sir, since / am challenged to it, by my
f~riend-not provoked, for he never provokes
any one, except to admire him, the more one
knows him-I will endeavor to read in the
character of the moth some Of those attri-
butes which are making the people regard
the administration so carefully.
The real moth that we have to deal with,
in a political way, is a combination of the
lackey moth, which generally haunts the
white house and hoVers about the purlieus
times in the army, or educated there. All
these moths you will find have a political
and destructive significance. If you note
how they are Matched; how they hide in CO.
coons; how they creep into dark places
through %crannies; how they go into closets
where goods are stored; how they lie all
summer quietly =. Laughter, the mem
bers gathering about the speaker.1
Mr.. Field rise to a question of order.
Lett the house be brought to order. Laugh
ter
Here the hammer fell.1
Several MEMBERSHIP on go on.
Mr.. Wheeler hope my colleague will
have unanimous consent to proceed.
The chairman-Does the gentleman from
New York yield to his colleague?
Mr.. Wheeler-Certainly. l yield all my
time to terrible suppositions. Suppose that
in the event of the success of the bill of the
honorable gentleman from Pennsylvania
(Mr. Kelly), there was at once established
an interconvertibility between the three
sixtv-fives which he proposes and the
national bank and ~greenback currency,
lgreat laughter, and in the process of con-
traction, the fve.twenties would fail to pay
and the greenback retire for the national
bank notes, in OF the extraor-
binary resumption of our irredeemable debt
last September by the treasury, at five dol
lars apiece in silver quarters; and the inn
ports should at once fall off several millions
while thus reciprocallY affecting the export
of peanuts from North Carolina, the hog
trade of Indiana, the hoop-pole trade of
Ohio, and indirectly, the clam trade of Cape
Cod, and to such an appreciable extent that
the German bankers, being In our
correspondence with the bulls OF
New York, should, by a sudden
panic, create a demand for the Saginaw
copper dollar notes of Ishpeming, Michigan,
quoted the other day by the gentlemen from
Pennsylvania, and thence would ensue a
rush of bears who had possessed themselves
of their W currency and invested il in the
three sixty-fves;and the currency would then
swell, and then shrink, and thus produce an
elasticity that would move the crops, and
induce such speculation that in one of the
swells we should burst and in one of its
shrinks we should collapse, would it so af-
feet the Ashantee war and the expenses OF
Great Britain as to demoralize the Saginaw
Mining company, destroy the destructive
influences of the LepidoPtera moth, and
thus stop an appropriation for the centen-
NAL of American independence? [Great
laughter
Say what and laugh as we will, it is the
truth, that there is clothing enough on hand
now to save one-third of all the reserve that
has been illegally issued from the treasury;
- lA-l-o1nn AhnnnnnAa