The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1897-05-25
Gossip at
the Capital
Special Correspondence of The Tribune.

Special Correspondence Of The Tribune.
Washington, May a.
Apparently the tariff discussion in the
senate is really here, and has come to
stay for no one can guess how long. Re-
publicans may agree to refrain from maxi
ing speeches; Democrats of all shades and
colors, Popuists and Silver Republicans,
may promise they will not obstruct by
unnecessary talking; but every one here
knows how vain the hope. A senator can
no more keep from talking than a duck
can keep from swimming when there Is
water in the poultry yard He knows
that the world is waiting to hear from
him, and he would not dsappoint the dear
old word even to save him some months
Of weary sizzling in the summer sun. The
Republicans are really sincere in their
present determination to let the others
do all the talking, but when they are
goaded by those others beyond endurance,
as they will be in this tariff debate more
than in any former one, how shall they
be silent in justice to themselves and to
the country?
Never before was a tariff bill taken up
under circumstances at all similar. One is
in no way. reminded of the memorable
contests when the Democrats were di-
vided, and in the house Sam Randall and
his followers stood an impregnable forti-
fication against the assaults of the free
traders. 1t is just possible the ranks of
the Democrats may be broken. There
were promises of support for any kind of
strong tariff bill that would give GER
tain southern interests all they demand
ed. But the Republican committee of the
senate, while vastly improving the house
measure in many respects as revenue
producing machine, has thrown so much
u
senate, with some assistance from those
who are neither Democrats nor Repubii-
cans, will practically enact new bill, and
therefore when the final vote comes each
side will claim the measure as it's own,
and the division, if any, will not be parti-
san.
1t is predicted by many that after the
senate has disposed of the bill an excited
and prolonged struggle will occur be-
tween the house and senate. These pre-
dictions have been made ever since the
character of the work of the senate COM
mittee became known, but they are made
with new confidence and force now that
the bill is up for discussion. 1t is certain
that the most interesting part of the tar
if performance will come when the SEN
ate bill goes back to the house and Ding
ley and his friends can compare the two
creations.
This storm between the house and the
senate has been gathering for so long, and
has had so many preliminary and warning
rumblings, that it will not be surprising
II it burst in all its fury some few months
hence. The waiting of the house in idle
ness and keen watchfulness of the per-
formances of the senate will not lessen
the force of the gale. The one thing that
will tend to make the house look with
some leniency on the prospective bill Is
the fact that it cannot by any possibility
be the bill that was framed by the Re-
publican committee. 1t is a pity that 1t
cannot be a square and open contest be-
tween the little circle which made the
house bill and that other smaller circle
of the senate which made bill in rooms
at the Arlington hotel, from which all
visitors We're excluded with the exception
of some of the principals or agents of the
trusts. Then we should have a pretty
contest indeed, for it would hinge largely
on the right of the senate to deliberately
frame revenue bill of it's own, regardless
of the provisions of the house bill, under
the guise Of amendments" The fiction
of the constitution that the house must
originate revenue measures was never so
apparent as 1t has been made by the per-
formances of the senate in connection
with this bill. Never before was a great
to bring money to the treasury and famo
to its creators, so contemptuously thrown
aside by the senate. There was no evil
dence before the senate to guide the de-
liberations of the subcommittee. They
asked no evidence. Never for a moment
was even single member of the commit
tee on ways and means asked to enter the
luxurious rooms at the hotel, where the
two or three senators juggled with fig
ures and received agents of the trusts,
for the purpose of explaining why this or
that rate was adopted. In every way the
trainers of the house bill were treated with
the most conspicuous contempt.
This led at once to somewhat suppressed
but mighty forcible denunciations from
the members of ways and means. Ding
ley, usually the most self-possessed and
cautious of men, broke out INTO inter-
views carefully critical of the action of the
senate subcommittee, and into much
bolder objurgations in the form of edi-
torial articles in his paper, the Lewiston
journal. A senator who is fond of quot
Ing Republican against Republican, tells
me that he has preserved every utterance
of Ding!ey in his paper in relation to the
tariff bill after 1t became known that the
form in which 1t had been sent to the
senate had been transformed, and that not
sembance of Dingley, and his commit
tee nad Deen lett In II. That senator,
wishing that nothing shall be lost that is
important bearing on the disagreements
of the Republicans, and the delightful rec
ognition of the sugar trust, promises that
he will read the Dingley editorials" in
the senate at the proper moment. This
will not tend to make things pleasanter
between the members of the two bodies.
I do not credit most OF the stories in re-
nd hn
brokers. That is not the way senators
plunge who are in the confidence of the
trusts. They merely have a standing or
der with some big man of the trust, who
informs him at the proper moment that
he has sold or bought a certain number of
shares for him. The action of the market
In such circumstances is peculiarly enough
always favorable to the senator, and the
proceeds are judiciously placed to the
credit Of the senator. That is better than
trusting broker.