Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1901-01-31
A BILLION AND A HALF.
How the Contents OF the Treasury
Are Being Voted Away by
Republicans.

The watchdogs of the treasury In
Washington are said to be consider
ably worried by the looseness with
which the two houses are voting away
the contents of the treasury.
They have been MAKING q rough
calculation which gives $3.50, 600. 900 as
the grand total likely to be appropri-
ated during the present session, and
over 81, 500, 900 900 as the aggregate for
the present congress.
This will be a record smasher. Not
so many years ago the whole country
was filed with indignation and gave
the republican party a terrible jolt
because a congress appropriated some
thing owe $1,000, 100000. The people
made things unpleasant for the states
men of the "billion-d0llar congress"
But now comes a congress which
adds one-half to this total, and no
great noise is made about it. The
people seem to be getting used to
mountainous expenditures. They
seem to have made up their minds
that p~rodigality has come to stay and
that it 5 idle to make any protest.
The watchdogs may growl, but who
cares? They may point to the fact
that even the enormous total for the
present congress includes nothing for
the Hanna-Payne shipping grab, and
not a dollar for the Nicaragua canal,
which it is now admitted will swallow
up some 5000, o00, 900 in the construc-
ton, o to speak of quite possible
losses from lack of traffic after COM
p~letion nor of still vaster expendi-
lures liable to result from interna-
ional complications. But the people
seem to take only a languid interest.
Many of them. indeed, are urging con-
gress on to these greater extremes of
prodigality.
Well, as Sairy Camp observes, "them
as wants to be tittiwated must pay ac-
cordin'." The American people are
paying roundly for the cultivation"
of their vanity, and to outward appear
ances they are paying very cheer
fully.
Their cheerfulness may be due, 10Y
ever. to their blind acceptance OF the
teaching of their preternaturally wise
republican schoolmasters that the
money which congress appropriates is
paid by stupid foreigners or rains
down from the skies or gushes up
from wells.
One of these days depression and
headache will come upon them again.
They will discover hat they have been
deceived. They will perceive that they
are the mes who furnish the money
to pay for the cultivation" and that
the investment is not r~emunerative.
The x-:ll Joo-n 4IoA 49, 49, -.-
contributing more millions to the
m~illionaires and impoverishing them
selves.
1t viii be a sorry day for the
learned republican doctors of ono
les when the people wake up and see
realities in place of dreams. And we
may think ourselves fortunate il they
do not go to another extreme and
punish not only those who have de-
ceived them. but those also who have
accumulated wealth in legitimate
ways and by the exercise of their wv
energies and their own genius for
causing two blades of grass to grow
where but one grew before"
People who have been robbed by
confidence operators may not stop to
A1dhC III ulStIuCl1OnS WHICH, tHcJ
come to themselves. With the spirit
of resentment strong upon them they
may flock to the standard of some.
prophet" like Prof. Heron as Euro
peans in days gone by fiocked to the
standard of Peter the Hermit or as
Frenchmen later threw themselves
into the bloody excuses of the great
revolution and the 4reign of error."
Chronicle.