St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-01-02
To Be Set Rolling in the
Senate This Week By
John Sherman.
He Will Attack the PreSi-
dents Message and Strike
a Hornets Nest.
Representative Mills Making
a Close Study Of the
Tariff Question.
A Republican Bill to Be In
troduced By Mr.. Browne,
of Indiana.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 1.-Congress will
be in session but four days this week.
1t will convene at noon Wednesday, and
there will be very little, if any, routine
business transacted. Speaker Carlisle
intends to announce his committees
Wednesday. Senator Sherman is going
to start the political ball moving in the
upper branch of congress by delivering
what is expected to be very severe
criticism of the presidents message.
His friends are eagerly expecting his
speech, which. it is thought will bring out
a great deal of the WarmeSt and most
exciting political debate. If OppOr-
tunity offers Mr.. Mitchell, Of Oregon,
will speak in support of his resolution
to investigate the feasibility Of the
establishment of a naval station on the
Pacific coast. Mr.. Blair will try to have
his educational bill considered, and the
direct tax bill may be taken off the
calendar and passed. 1t will be impOs-
sible to give anything like a reliable
forecast of the proceedings in congress
before Wednesday morning.
CONGRESSMAN MILLS,
of Texas, who will as everybody eX-
poets, be the chairman of the ways and
means committee of the house, has been
making some calculations as to the
effect likely to be produced on the rev.
enue by certain changes on the tariff,
and he has called upon the bureau of
statistics for a great deal of information
on the subject. The result of his calcu-
latiOn and the figures received from the
bureau of statistics he has had printed,
but not as a bill to be introduced in the
hOuse-Only as data from which a bill
No Iof 10 will n
mitted to the committee on ways and
means when the house reassembles and
that committee has been Or
ganized. Mr.. Mills denies the
truth of the published story
that he has submitted a complete tariff
bill to the president, and that the latter
has approved it. So far as Mr.. Mills
knows, nothing like finished tariff
bill had yet been prepared for introduce
ton in the house. The president, he
says, has not been consulted about any
of the data he has collected, and so far
as he is personally concerned
NO TARIFF BILL
would be presented to the house until
the committee on ways and means had
considered and taken part in shaping it.
Mr.. Mills is in favor of substituting ad
valOrem for specific duties in many
cases, because he is of the opinion that
the specific duties weigh more heavily
ON the poorer classes of goods which
are used by the poorer classes of peO-
pie, and that under specific du-
ties the wealthy people who buy
the best kind of imported goods
do not pay their fair proportion of tax
alton. Representative Browne, of In
diana, who will certainly be one of the
Republican members of the ways and
means committee, thinks the house will
pass tariff reducing bill this session.
1t will not be a radical measure, how
ever, for the conservative element in
the Democratic party, he thinks, will
prevent that. "The Democrats in the
house," Mr.. Browne says, in an inter-
view published in the Post here to-day,
twill not put forward bill on the basis
of the presidents message. They
would not dare do it. They wouldn't
dare bring forward bill to carry out
their theory of tariff for revenue only.
Such a bill could easily be formed.
There is no difficulty about it, but the
COUNTRY WOULDN'T STAND IT,
and the Democrats know that. The
changes in the tariff, fancy, will not
be very numerous. OF the 400 articles
ably not half dozen will be removed.
The great number of articles which are
SO much talked about as being very
troublesome will remain pretty nearly
as they are. You can get
copy of the last tariff law and be
perfectly certain that in all, except
about dozen items, the new law will
be a fac-simile. l would reduce the rev.
enue S75,O00,OOO. My plan would be to
put sugar on the free list, also salt and
lumber, and take the internal revenue
tax off tobacco. Adding to the free list
is the only certain way of reducing the
revenue. l would endeavor to remove
some of the inequalities of
THE DUTIABLE LIST.
have the frame of such bill ready,
and when the time comes l intend to
offer it, with the approval of my col
leagues, to the house. If l should be
on the committee of ways and means
again, and 1 suppose l shall, shall
make a note of every item on the list
which. in my opinion, needs to be
changed. These things, which l will
have an opportunity of noticing as the
bill passes through our commit
tee, l will put into my own
bill, and the result will submit to the
house. When the bill of the Democratic
party comes before us we want to have
a Or position of our own to make. l can
imagine that the Democrats, by mutual
concessions, may get up bill. The
Republicans want to say the people in
that next campaign, We offered good
bill and the Democrats would not have
it, / can imagine that the Democrats
this time, however, may get up quite a
reSnectable billo