The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-07-07
LONG SESSION
inks MANY
Congressional junketers Are
Weary OF Delay in Many
Planned Trips.
By Ernest G. Walker.

WASHINGTON, June 24.-There is
great fdgeting among the Congress
sional junketeers, as the hot summer
days wear by. Strange as it may seem,
there is authority for the statement
that never before have 50 many junkets
been organized under one guise or an
other and never before were so many
senators and representatives getting
things ready for trip hither or
thither at the government expense as
this summer. They have to arrange
those things more carefully nowadays,
when public sentiment is decidedly
hostile to junkets by Congress but all
the same the Congressman get the
trips, by hook or by crook, and in these
latter days the Congressman have be-
come very ingenious in working out
schemes by which the government pays
for the summers travel.
During the last two years visit to
the Panama Canal, in fact two visits
or three visits, have become a favorite
Congressional junket. The statesman
at Washington, who wants sea trip
at government expense, suddenly be-
comes greatly concerned about the
progress of the Panama Canal. He
gets something sent out TO the news
papers in the district about his inten-
ton of going down there to see just
how things are going anyway. He has
to pay his railroad fare from Wash
lngton over to New York and return,
which costs only about SIS and, apart
from that the Congressional iunketeer
is in clover for from three to four
weeks. He can easily get pass over
the government steamship lines to the
isthmus, in fact is about the only
American citizen who can, and once on
the isthmus he is taken care of in
fine fashion and at very little cost. He
returns after fine vacation, bristling
with ideas, which nobody in Washing
ton cares pickayune for. He imposes
an interview or two upon his eonstit-
uents about the canal and then settles
down to the same old routine. But
the professional vacationists at govern
ment expense, who hold down jobs in
Senate and House-most of them are
in the House-do not care to go to
Pana.a in summer. They reserve that
annual for the holidays or for the win
ter months after Congress has adj
iourned.
The luscious junket of this summer
will be out to Seattle. Some 80 or 40
Congressman are going to see the Alas
ka fair at government expense ana,
they are getting everything organized
so that there will be no hitch about
getting the expense bills approved.
The exposition authorities have been
extending invitations and lot of pa
triots who draw $500 a year and per-
quisites from the Treasury are bounu,
ing with expectations of free rides,
free dinners, free drinks, and free
cigars for about a month of the Con-
gressional recess. The Exposition may
have to foot some of the bills, but II
makes no difference to your Congress
sional junketeer. 1t is the free fare
that concerns him and he cares not
who pays the score.
The Conservation Commission and the
internal Waterways Commission prom
Use toiyield junket or two before the
summer is over. Always when COM
mission is launched on new idea, the
commissioners simply yearn to see how
it is done in Europe and they are not
satisfied till they have galloped up and
down the continent at the expense Of
the United States. Undoubtedly the
vouchers which have been turned in
for these sightseeing trips of Commits
sioners in Europe have cost this gov
eminent first and last many millions
of dollars. And the new Commissions
are still heading for Europe as ener-
getically as ever. A party interested
in the study of conservation and i'm
provement of waterways expects to
sail soon after Congress adjourns with
the usual contingent of clerks anu
stenographers, always persons who are
the personal friends of the CommIs-
sions who have some sort of a personal
pull.
Orators in Last Throes.
The tariff orators are apparently in
the last throes. Almost any morning
one may look for the announcement
that the last item has been disposed of.
There are hardly a score OF items I'D
the entire bill of many hundred items
remaining to be acted upon. But these
are items that cause fights and ac-
cordingiy the Senate is making haste
slowly.
Senator Aldrich had a list of the
items, which have not been disposed of,
printed the other day. It was mighty
welcome reading to the entire Senate.
There were Just few subjects, one or
two from the different fourteen SEIZED
ules in the bill. And how earnestly
the Finance Committee is trying to
lead the long winded senators down
through that list. But after it is COM
pleted there comes the excise tax up
on corporations. The Finance Commit
tee is struggling with it. There is
great difficulty in arranging the Ian.
guage satisfactorily. The President is
sitting up nights over it. The Attorney
General is also sitting up nights over
II