The Sentinel=record., 1914-07-26

whole week, and when the witnesses
 began to appear and tell what the ob- l legations of the United States were
 to the benighted inhabitants, l was
 curious to know about the matter and began to ask questions. The quee-
 tions were ruled out by the majority
 members of the committee in charge. but they afterwards relented suffi-
 ciently to allow me to cross-eXamine the witnesses, which I did at the
 three sessions each day for six days.
 We finally examined the last witness,
 and on the day when we came to
 make our report, although l was the
 minority member of the committee, I
 was afterwards permitted to write
 the report myself, which will be
 found somewhere in the annals of
 Congress, l suppose, and that report
 was used as the text of MT Holman,
 chairman of the Committee on Alp | 2ropriations. to wand off the annual
 raid made upon the Treasury for the improvement of Hot Springs.
 Now, Hot Springs proved to be a Government reservation, not by the
 act of God, but growing out of a wick | ed lawsuit between two rival claim ants who claimed to own the proper 1 ty: and when the case got to the | Supreme Court of the United States.
 the Supreme Court, unfortunately for
 the United States, found that the l United States was the owner of those 1 reservations which my friend from
 Arkansas thinks were set aside by
 the providence of man nearly a hun
 dred years ago for the benefit of fu- | ture generations. It was a blunder if | they were set aside at all. and the
 blunder was only found out at the
 end of this litigation, some B or 40 years ago.
 When we went down there we found | this condition: On one side was the Government reservation. where the springs were. On the east side of a gorge we found various bath houses and one large hotel. On the other side were various business houses, on the west mountain, at the foot of the mountain, fronting on the Little Hot | Springs river that flowed through the
 gorge. These were business houses
 mostly occupied by gamblers at that l time, who proceeded to relieve the people of the money they brought down there. There was a tradition
 that the Jesse James gang used to operate between Hot Springs and the Iron Mountain road, some 90 miles away, and that the James boys never
 attacked a party coming out of Hot Springs, because the pickings were too
 poor. (Laughter.}
 They always struck party going In to Hot Springs before the nurses and
 the doctors and the bath house people and the hotels had had any chance at 1 them. Daughter
 Well, we went there to investigate
 the building of a new tunnel through
 this gorge, to take down the flood wa
 ters that came from the mountain l both from the reservation and the | mountain above, where there were | three large streams that joined at | the Government reservation and
 made a heavy flow in times of great storms, when the rain rushed down | the mountain. We were there primar- | fly to investigate the complaint that
 the contractor was not putting the pro | her material into this tuunp1 that was
 there, and they tried to confine their | investigation to that; but the people wanted to be heard on something else, and wanted to hear them, and We
 went into everything connected with the whole business When the Govern ment found that it owned the reserva- tions on each side, especially where
 the springs were, and the reserva-
 tions where these gambling houses were on the other side of the gorge, | they appointed a commission. That commission went down there and as- sessed the value of the Improvements
 that had been put on by the various
 people who had built there supposng l they were owners, and the commission
 made awards of the full value of the l improvements. Then the Government | turned around and rented these plae-
 es to the former owners, with the inn Iprovements, at nominal rental, and
 when we went down there the Govern | - - -