The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-02-14
ITO SPEND VAST SUMS
sATURNAI.IA OF coNaRESSIOrs- AL PRoFLI0ACY PROMISED.
Representatives of Close Districts View With Alarm Their Chances
 For Reelection if Present.
 Program Goes Through.

New Orleans, Feb. 13.-A special to The Times Democrat from Washington says: Something besides Cuban sugar and the Philippine business Is beginning to worry thoughtful Republicans in Congress who are looking forward to the Congressional elections.
 Statesmen of the large calinre of Sen man Chester I. Long of Kansas, are deep ly concerned at the extraordinary alti- tude to which the national appropriations have reached under the Republican re- gime. Their unparalleled volume and the accelerated velocity of their Imitation in the last four years are equally amazing. Senators and Congressman from the Western agricultural districts particular ly do not like their appearance in ths concrete.
 They certainly have cause for alarm. The pace is too rapid. Spooner and Long perceive that the bubble will soon burst unless the tremendous pressure upon the Der who would call a halt is rapidly in- creasing. None of them openly antaso- nixes the fiscal policy of the party but privately all freely deprecate the riotous
 distribution of public money which Is now going forward, and for which their party
 Is almost wholly responsible.
 Congress is acting as If we had money
 to burn" remarked another well known Western Republican today. Tt has gone appropriation mad. This legislative loose- |
 of the public service It Is demoralizing.
 Even many of the appropriations direct
 ly recommended by the Executive De-
 partments are crude. and ill-considered. and some of them wholly unnecessary.
 The fever is spreading.
 When the civil war ended, not only the government but the people began im-
 media.ely to retrench, I may say reform, of the military period. both moral and
 fiscal. Not so now. The short Spanish
 war merely whetted the official appetite
 for more. It lasted just long enough
 seemingly to furnish the excuse and
 point the way to the treasury.
 There Is expansion in all uuarters-in
 the army. navy. the civil service; in our executive departments and bureaus. the
 number and grandeur of proposed public
 edifices, in official salaries, and In all
 public enterprises and projects whatso- ever. I mean in numbers as well as ex- penditure
 And now. to cap the climax. comse
 esaries ead from ;so to per 0a e% Of course. the temptation and forces at work are almost overpowering. but
 hope Ao such bill will pass. If 1t passes I will be blowing for corn in 1903! For of years longer at s5,ooo than to let in an opposition successor at s15,0o0. Apparently there is in Congress no sense of the unities left; no acknowledg- uleut OI FGSpOISlDiiily UT on the part of anybody, leader or fol- lower. I acknowledge my own weakness my cantributory negligence. The craze to divert the public money to private or local benefit is. if anything, more accent uated in this Congress than the last. The tide has risen so high that even thick-and-thi ministration organs have warned a halt. A New York Republican payer shows that bills are on the caien-
 dar which win tax the Treasury for
 more than $60,0 ,0)O for public buildings alone fin various quarters.
 "The country will not long stand such nonsense. We cannot stand 1t as party. Yet I deny that the Republicans are wholly responsible for this saturnalia of extravaganza. The forces behind and below are irresistible The whole country
 Is up in the balloon with us. But these
 halcyon days of prosperity will be sue
 ceeded by depression, and then fear we
 shall hear something fall with dull
 thud
 When the day of reckoning comes we
 will be held accountable; when the coun-
 try wants a scapegoat it will jump bodily
 upon the Republican party. We cannot
 plead that we couldn't help 1t. We have
 had control of the entire governmental
 machine now for six years.
 Ahead of us yet. aside from the worse
 aspects of the picture, we have the great
 canal appropria ton of Sl50000,000; then
 $6o, ,OOO, 900 for rivers and harbors; a ship
 subsidy bill which will cost nobody
 knows how much, and several lesser pro- Jects involving sums way up into the millions The people seem now to indorse
 these outlays. There is a single scheme for beautifying this capital which will
 cost s2o,OOo,OoO to start on. not including the proposed memorial bridge.
 The perspective, to a man who expects
 to stand for reelection in a close district
 next fall Is not altogether bright"