The Butler weekly times. (Butler, Mo.) 1881-1918, 1911-07-20
WASHINGTON LETTER.
Special Washington Correspond.
ent of The Times.

Washington, D. C.-Did President
Taft throw open Controller bay un
der conditions especially designed tc
permit the Inorganic uggenheim in
terests-and no other-to gobble up
this richest of the Alaska land prizes
before anyone else could have a
chance to file?
This is the big important question
to which the House committee on ex-
penditures in the interior department
is seeking an answer.
If such was not the deliberate plan
of the administration, why were
these lands thrown open by such I'M
usual procedure-by a secret execu-
tive order instead of by proclamation?
Another query: If there was no
conspiracy between the administra-
ton and the big exploiting interests,
how does it come that Spectator
Ryan, supposed agent of the Morgan
Guggenheim, alone knew of the issu-
ance of President Taft's secret (?) Or
der and was able to file soldiers
scrip on $50 rods of Controller bay
water front within three days after
President Taft signed the order elm
mating the land from the national
forest and before any other man
could have known of the order?
Another extraordinary feature of
the case is this: The unvariable rule
has been to give go days notice be-
fore any claimant could file on this
land, but, according to Mr.. bennett
of the General Land Office, when the
Presidents order first came to him
the SO day provision was in it, and
when he next saw the order there
was no time allowed whatever for no
tce to the public-not even day.
That there was actually an under
standing between the administration
and the men who We're to profit
through the Presidents amazing Sc
cret order is not state OF affairs so
remarkable to those who have been
closely following things in Washing
ton. There have been precedents
exactly paralleling such a perform
ance. When the railroad regulation
bill! was sent to the last Congress by
the President the public was in abSo-
lutte ignorance of its contents. But
the fact developed later that although
the President had not seen fit to take
the public into his confidence, he had
allowed the railroad interests not on
ly to suggest the lines along which
the bill should be framed, and to load
it with jokers against the public inter-
est, but to actually pass upon and O.
X. the bill before the people were
even permitted to know that its prep
aration was contemplated.
Before the investigation into this
newest Alaska land jugglery is finish
ed it promises to develop a condition
of affairs beside which the attempted
tleft of Alaska coal lands is inconse-
quential.
The probe is in charge of Repre-
sentative James NJ. Graham of ILL
nois, one of the really big men in the
Democratic House, whose career
from the very first day he entered
Congress has stamped him as man
above craftsmanship and one especially
qualified by service on the Ballinger
investigating committee to make the
inquiry he is now so conscientiously
engaged in.
An "Impartial' Investigator.
G. W. Burton, special agent of the
Tariff Board who is now travelling in
Europe gathering "exact informa-
ton" to be used as the basis of tariff
revision by the Republicans, is an
Aldrich standpatter on the tariff ques-
ton, and was undoubtedly selected
because of this qualification. Bur-
ton, on the side, has been writing let
tiers back for publication in the Los
Angeles Times, a high protectionist
paper. This Impartial" investiga-
tor, gathering "exact information" in
in a recent letter declared that:
"Your tariff revision demand fellow
Americans, is fad" In another
letter, excoriating the whole tariff re-
vision suggestion, this Impartial"
investigator made this judicial and
carefully weighed observation: 1.-THE
merchants of our country who are so