Gilpin observer., 1901-08-29
WASHINGTON GOSSIP.

Secretary Hay has appointed Dr. j. ].
Rodriguez of Washington city secre-
ytary Of the United States delegation to
the interna tiOnal conference of Ameri.
can states to be held in tie City Of
Mexico next October. Mr.. Rodriguez
is a lawyer and served as a special
counsel to the American peace commits
sioners in Paris,
Judge Barnard of the Supreme Court
of the District of Columbia, disposing
of a recent case, stated that, while the
courts of several states had taken diff
ferent views, it is generally conceded
that pension money, when in course of
transmission to the pensioner is not
liable to attachment, and in n number
of states, Iowa and Wisconsin for ,eX-
ample, the courts have held that the
money received by an individual as
pension cannot be attached. 1nclininS
to the view that the law should be lib,
orally construed, he held that pension
money, either in transit or in the pos
session of the pensioner, could not be
attached or seized.
Events on the Isthmus of Panama
are being watched with particular at
tention by the administration, largely
on the transisthmian canal. Attention
in the United States has been directed
to canal by the Nicaraguan route
rather than by the Panama route. 1t
is not at all certain, however, that the
isthmian commission will not recon-
mend the purchase of the Panama con-
cesSion from the French company and
the completion of the canal by that
route. In the meantime the admins
tration is anxious to avoid any cOmpli-
cations that might interfere with the
construction of a canal by either route,
such as might arise in the event of Eu-
ropean Intervention in the affairs of
Columbia.
The determination of the Treasury
Department to take advantage of the
authority given to the Chinese eXclu
sion act to regulate the transit through
the United States of Chinese emigrants
bound for other countries has been Off
cially brought to the attention of the
Chinese legation. The occasion pre-
sented itself when an attache of the
legation called upon Assistant Secre-
tary Taylor to lay before him a mes
sage received from the Chinese consul
at San Francisco, conveying the infor-
nation that Chinese destined for Mex
leo had been refused the privilege of
landing at that port. Mr. Taylor told
the attache that the department had
become convinced that most of the Chi
nese who had gone into Mexico in the
past two or three years had smuggled
themselves back across the border into
the United States. He therefore an
nounced that hereafter the department
ws7ld refuse landing permission to Chi
nese bound for Mexico unless it could
be absolutely satisfied of their good
faith.
Chairman Burton of the river and
harbor committee, who. with most of
the members of his committee, spent
several weeks in western states, exam
lining river and harbor improvements,
was not unmindful of the arid land sit
uation, and wherever the opportunity
offered made inquiries and; observa-
tions as to that vast undertaking. His
interest was all the more intense be-
cause of the fact that with every river
and harbor bill of late years comes the
fight to attach to that bill a provision
appropriating n large fund for govern
ment aid in the reclamation of arid
lands in the West. Upon his return to
Washington, in speaking of the arid
land problem, Mr.. Burton said: "The
prominence of the arid lands problem
was impressed upon us by the trip. At
the same time under present conditions
the quantity of arid land which can
be made valuable for cultivation is
much smaller than is popularly suppos-
ed. The value of irrigated portions
would consist in the extreme product
iveness and in their proximity to min
ing and other localities where cultivat-
ed land is very scarce"