The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-12-04
APPROPRIATIONS <, !. ID BE KEPT ] .gy;<Gih But t is Going to b' q Difl-
 cult Matter CONGRESS- CONFINES TODAY Gossip of Probable Legislation and of What Will Be Accomplished
 During the First
 Week.
CONGRESS CONFINES TODAY
BY WATTERsoN sTEALEY.

Washington, December 3.-tSpecial. )-- Representative Tawney of Minnesota the new chairman in the house appropriations committee has received quiet tip from Speaker Cannon that he is expected to keep down appropriations at the lowest possible notch.
 How MT. Tawney is going to manage it is difficult to see at this time. The little the House seems bent upon saving in the government printing office is sure to be placed elsewhere and when the ses- sion expires 1t will likely be found that appropriations are as great as they have been in corresponding periods of the last two Congresses.
 At the beginning of the last session of the last Congress. Chairman Hemenway received notice that the government was spending too much money, nearly eight hundred million dollars having already been appropriated. Regardless of all MT. Hemenway could do the grand total of the Fifty-eghth Congress reached $1,601 ,357,- IA and the Fifty-ninth Congress bids fair to get off no better This. however. will not be the fault of MT. Tawney. He Is as good a man as the material on the republican side of the House affords.
 Reduce Philippine Tariff.
 Representative Payne of New York, who will succeed himself as chairman of the ways and means committed may tomor- row introduce a bill reducing the tariff on products of the Philippine islands to 25 per cent of the Dingey rates. The bill is expected to provide for free trade in all products except sugar and tobacco until the termination of the Spanish treaty in 1909, when everything will come in free. The President. in his message, will strongly advocate it's passage but 1t is already apparent that 1t will be stoutly opposed by number of the standpatters. Under the lead of the Amer ican Economist, the official organ of the standpatters, a campaign has already been inaugurated against the bill.
 The ways and means committee and the Senate finance committee are to be flooded with petitions from American sugar and tobacco growers asking that they be given hearing before the bill is reported from committed The democrats are solid ly in favor of the passage of the bill and as the House and Senate leaders favor it, it's enactment into law is looked for at an early date.
 Santo Domingo Treaty.
 The Santo Domingo treaty which be- comes the order of business in the Sen ate executive sessions has, 1t will be re- membered, been so modified by the Senate committee that the President and his Sec retary of State concluded before the adjournment of the extra session of the Senate, that they did not care very much what became of it and accordingly the Senate promptly adjourned. The President then went in his customary way and pro- ceeded to take charge of the Dominican custom houses as though the Senate had ratified the treaty emitting, of course. the Presidents Monroe doctrine stump speech. This action will meet with se- we're criticism on both sides in the Sem ate. Strange to say. the fact that the administration has already gone to work and become mixed up in the Dominican island affairs, the very thing the Senate did not want done, will be the main argument for ratifying the treaty.