Arizona republican., 1899-11-01
GAM,
FICKAs,
MORFORD.

Various statesmen, budding and 9TH
erwise. are hunting interviewers in the
east nowadays and ex-
A JAW plotting their views
SMITH upon what the next
HARVEST. congress ought to do in
order to strengthen the
respective parties in the next national
campaign. We are treated to a list of
panaceas for existing evils as long as
the moral code, with suggestions as to
notifications of laws now on the
statute books and constitutional
amendments galore, which if even
given a day in congressional court
would bankrupt the session of time to
pass the appropriation bills.
1t is very safe to assume that the
first session of the next congress will
discuss a great many important ques-
tions and deal with very few of them.
The session prior to a national con-
vention has a habit of taking this
course as a conservative and a safe
one. There will be balloons full of or
atory no doubt. Speeches by the ton
will be dumped into the Congressional
Record to be afterwards shot through
the mails under frank to state and ma
tional committees and home constitu-
encies. The session before the cam
paign always shows up more requests
for leave to print than any other,
and the good voters at home, in nine
cases out of ten, never know whether
the speech was delivered or not. 1t is a
great harvest for the jawsmith and the
congressional bunco steerer, the ses-
sion before the campaign, while the re-
sponsible committees from which leg
islation emanates. keeps up. like Br'er
Rabbit, a heap of thinking and Lays
low
A new speaker is to take the place of
Thomas B. Reed in this session before
the national campaign. Unlike ex-
Speaker Reed in the last campaign. he
will be supported by a very slender
majority in the house of representa-
tives. Unlike ex-Speaker Reed, he has
not the disposition to dominate the
chairmen of committees and insist
upon the consideration or non-consid-
Grafton of measures committed to their
charge. AS a western man, General
Henderson will be closer in touch with
public sentiment than his predecessor
and will have the additional advantage
of being on friendly terms with the
president, which the ex-speaker was
not at any moment during the time he
welded the gavel.' Conservative legis-
lation may be looked for at the first
session of congress before the next
presidential campaign, such legisla-
ton as is thoroughly approved at the
White House and can attract the votes
of a united party in the lower house
The new congressman with an earnest
desire to shine as constructive states
men, and the old stagers playing to the
home grand stand, will run q pretty
poor chance of scintillating as planets
in the armament of legislative ac-
be doubted that there will be some af-
firmative legislation of Importance
enacted at the next session and that
full opportunity will be given to Mr.
Bryan's followers to place themselves
on record before the people and furnish
renewed evidence of democratic lack of
knowledge and democratic inability to
grasp any large problem until it has
been solved by others and gone down
into history as an accomplished fact
There will be a great skirmishing
among the shelves of the congressional
library on the part of rock-ribbed
Bourbons and callow college graduates
of democratic faith for wing speeches
against the acquisition of California
and the great southwest and of ALASKA
nearly twenty years later. while the
arguments which deafened the ears of
that great patron saint of democracy.
Thomas jefferson, when he made the
Louisiana purchase will be revamped
by his degenerate political descendants
in opposition to the retention of our
$40 OO0. 600 purchase of the Philippines.
This is to be expected. Let it come