The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-10-31
GUESSING ON CONGRESS
NO TWO FORECASTS AGREE AS TO
THE POLITICAL COMPLEXION.
Strong Opposition at Washington to
the Plan of Paying Spain $4O,-
100000 for Philippines.
to the Indianapolis Journal.

Special to the Indianapolis Journal.
WASHINGTON, Oct 30-The Eastern
press to-day voluntarily forecasts the result
of the election next month. Politicians who
have intimate acquaintance with the details
of the campaign and who are familiar with
local conditions in all parts of the country
pick flaws in every newspaper forecast and
prove the utter unreliability of the whole
bunch. Several of the papers have made
expensive and careful canvasses, but the
trouble seems to be that the information
obtained is crudely summarized and conclu-
sions hastily and often incorrectly built
thereon by dog-fight editors and market re-
porters-good in their specialties, but lost
in a political mix-up with the politics of
forty-five States. No two forecasts agree,
and where totals are within hailing distance
careful comparison shows that conclusions
are reached by entirely different routes, and
that there is a onfdence-destroyng dissim-
ilarity as to essential details.
There is strong opposition to the plan of
paying $40,0O0OOO for the Philippines. The
proposition is certain to be vigorously an
tagonized in the Senate if it should be en-
bodied in a treaty brought before that body,
The opposition is based on the theory that
the United States should not pay anything
of consequence for territory that has al
ready been conquered, and that, according
to jingo ideas. should be ours without fur
ther price or ceremony.
AS a result of the frenzy into which the
whites and blacks of North Carolina have
worked themselves there is every indica-
tion of bloody election day in many Sec
tions of that State. The so-called conserva-
tives are doing their best to avert san
culinary collisions, but as the 'conserva-
tives'' are, almost to man, trying to rout
the negroes out of Office and keep them
out, the black people decline to look on
them as entirely impartial or to concede
that they have right to dictate what the
colored men should do under the circum-
stances. Some of the Republican leaders in
North Carolina politics who are now in
Washington hold that this race war will not
operate against their party national issues,
and that the State will send as many Re-
publicans to Congress next year as now
in the delegation. The Democrats, on the
contrary, confidently count on electing eight
out of the nine North Carolina congressman.
Lawyers in all parts of the country are
inquiring when the Supreme Court will issue
rules and regulations for the government
of courts in the enforcement of the bank
ruptcy law. There is nothing to prevent the
lower courts from going ahead and giving
attention to bankruptcy matters according
to their own construction of the law, but
a great majority of judges are 10th to do
any pioneering in this field, preferring to
wait for the issuance of set of rules which
they can blindly follow. Recognizing the
force of the general demand, the Supreme
Court is giving this matter its industrious
attention, and will probably be heard from
very soon.