The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1897-04-08
Our Washington Letter.

Especial correspondence of The Journal.
WASHINGTON, April 5, 1897. The Re-
publican party has again shown it's bust
ness-like qualities. In less than two
weeks from the time of it's meeting, the
House, controlled by this party, has con-
sidered and passed the tariff bill and has
done so despite the opposition and delay
and fault finding system of the Demo-
where the Republicans have already
shown their business like methods by
taking it up in committee and putting
more than a weeks labor upon it prior to
its passage by the House. 1t is expected
that the bill will be completed by the
committee during the present month and
be taken up by the Senate early in May,
passed by that body in June, and go into
effect July list. President Cleveland and
the free-trade Congress, elected in No
vember, 1892, did not get their tariff bill
upon the statute books until August 20,
1884, one year and ten months from the
date of the election. 1t looks now as
though the Republicans would get their
tariff measure on the statute books with
in seven months of the date of election,
possibly even sooner than that
The State Department continues to re-
ceive encouraging reports from Cuba The
attitude of the authorities there has I'M
dergone a remarkable change since this
| administration came into operation
Every few days come reports of addition
al releases, and only three citizens of the
United States now remain in Cuban pris-
ons, asking intervention by the Govern
ment in their behalf. Several others are
| still imprisoned but they have either
| been given the fullest rights of trial
under our treaties with Spain, or have,
for reasons of their own, omitted to ask
intervention in their behalf by this Gov
eminent. No feature of the present adj
ministration has been received with such
marked satisfaction and commentator as
that relating to the rights of American
citizens abroad.
| WOOL wheat and corn, those three sta
| pie agricultural products, are feeling the
effect of renewed confidence and renewed
| prosperity which have followed the inau-
| guration of Mckinley. The standard
| commercial authorities report higher
prices for wool, wheat, flour, and other
articles of agricultural production, and
| 1,ou hot Ia
tons of the week Just ended are greater
than those Of the corresponding week of
last year, and those of corn three times as
| great as those of the corresponding week
of last year. The farmers of the country
are finding no occasion for regret that
they voted for Mckinley and prosperity.
Democrats in Congress and elsewhere
are greatly disappointed with the sugar
schedule of the Dingley tariff bill as well
as other features. They are specially
disappointed regarding the sugar schedule
as they are unable to find in it any oppor-
tunity to charge that the bill is advanta-
geous to or in the interest of trusts. They
remember with great bitterness the fact
that their own law which now stands
upon the statute books, was condemned
by the public generally as framed in the
interests of the sugar trust, and they had
hoped to find some opportunity to make a
similar charge against the Dingley bill
but in this they have absolutely failed,
and those of them who are frank enough
to confess the truth admit that it wipes
out the advantages which the sugar trust
has enjoyed under the present Democratic
law.
| The divisions in the Democratic ranks
are as strongly marked on the tariff ques-
ton as they were in the currency discus.
sions of last fall The recent debates in
Congress have shown a very rapid growth
of protection sentiment among the Demo
Gratis, and growing hostility to the ex-
IRENE free trade and free raw material
views of the Cleveland wing of the party
Numbers of Democrats declare their hos
tility to the free trade theories of Cleve-
land, Wilson, ct al. while others denounce
IN their speeches the free-raw material
proposition, few of the most indepen-
dent thinkers going so far as to vote for
the Dingley bill, although their party as
sociates had denounced it as the most
radical tariff measure ever offered in Con-
gress, not excepting the Mckinley law.
Death OF William K. WitherIe.
10 q o 81