Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1892-01-06
MR.. CRISP'S TROUBLES.
SCENES OF OLD BABEL TO BE
REVIVED BY THE DEMOCRATS.

Numbering Into Truth-Carpet Prices
and Carpet Wool-Dangerous Tariff
Tinkering-Some New misunderstanding
slIsh Comments on the Presidents Mes
sage-Parngraphs and Illustrations.
The Speakers Troubles and Failures.
1t is not worth while to crificise
Speaker Crisp's assignments minutelv.
His supporters are doing that with suffi-
Gent yigor and acrimony. A large ma
jority of his chairmen, a remarkably
large majority of the chairnen of i'm
portant committees. are from the South,
but he was forced to handle the tools
that he had, and out of an essentially
Southern party he could not make a
Northern organization to save his life
If representatives of less than a third
of the whole people have now much
more than half of the power, that is
what the voters determined upon a
year ago, for it is of the very essence of
Democratic supremacy.
No one doubts that the ways and
means committee is expressly arranged
to prevent the framing of any general
tariff bill, and Mr.. Springer will be sus-
tanned IN that purpose by those who
wish to make the tariff question as little
important as possible next year, and to
shut out Mr.. Cleveland from the presi-
dental nomination. On this very
ground the shaping of the committees is
savagelv attacked by other Democrats
besides Mr.. Watterson. The appropri
atoms committee is relatively strong,
and will help Mr.. Holman to carry out
his ideas of economy. The committee
on coinage, with Mr., Bland as its head,
rs Enthusiastically for free coinage of sill
yer, and will do what it can to carry out
the ideas Of Mr.. Crisp's faction in that
respect. The committee on commerce,
with Mr.. Mills as its chairman, is Of no
practical importance, but the commit
tees which have charge of the great ap-
propriatlons, the river and harbor. the
pensions, the war and navy committees.
are in such hands that liberality toward
the South at least may be expected.
But it is absurd for some of the
Speakers friends to complain that he
has selected for many of the important
places men who have not shown their
fitness for such work hitherto. The
criticism has IN truth curious force,
for the Speaker seems to have carefully
avoided In many cases the men who
have been charged with particular
duty Or branch OF work under previous
organizations, and has setthem to other
work, while selecting other men for the
places they were supposed to be best
qualified to fill Beginning with Mr..
Mills whose friends thought he knew
more about the tariff than anybody else,
the Speaker found Mr.. Springer for the
committee on WAYS and means, and set
Mr.. Mills to other and unfamiliar du-
hes. In precisely the same way most
of the Democratic members who have
been active in the work of particular
committees in past years are carefully
sent to other committees to see what
they can do there.
The friends who berate Mr.. Crisp for
this seemingly whimsical selection for
get one important fact. The Democrat
&c party under every previous organiZa-
ton of the House has been dreadful
failure IN the conduct of business. If
Mr. Crisp had the good sense to recog-
nize this fact he only needed courage to
shake them up" all around. 1t is a
supreme justification OF Mr.. Crlsp's pc
eulia selections that the active Demo-
Gratis III the House, with whom he has
been associated for years, and whose
capacity or incapacity he has had album
dant opportunity to Judge, have in fact
been tried IN places for which they
proved they were not fit. That was at
least sufficient reason for trying them
IN other places for which, perchance,
they might have some sort of fitness
If anybody supposes that this expla-
nation IS offered in humor or in jest, let
him remember how things were in the
House when Mr.. Carlisle or Mr. Ran
dali was Speaker. Let him try to recall
q single important committee which did
It's work thoroughly. faithfully and in
teiligently.-N York Tribune.