THE SPENDING OF PUBLIC MONEY.

ON. THOMAS B. REED, ex-Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Hon. William S. Holman, Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, discuss in the March North American Review the spending of public money-each in his characteristic vein and from widely different points of view.

Generous Mr. Reed.

Quite naturally, Mr. Reed defends the generous appropriations of the Fifty-first Congress. The charge has been made again and again that the last Congress was a "Billion-Dollar Congress." Mr. Reed retorts that this is a "Billion-Dollar Country, and a billion dollars was appropriated by that body "because the citizens who are the rulers of it demanded it by reason of the growth of the country and by reason of certain issues which had been fought out, settled, and determined by them."

As defined by Mr. Reed, economy is the just adapting of expenditures to needs, not the withholding of money. "The word has a pleasant and satisfying sound, and there are those who think that they can, by pronouncing the word often enough, make seventy-five cents do the work of a dollar, and thereby safely stint the honest and needed expenses of a great and growing country.

"There are, moreover, several things which are called economy that are not economy at all. Penny wise may be pound foolish. To build fine public buildings-and they make every one who goes into them long to behold signs of the activity of the scrubbing-brush-is no more economy than it is cleanliness. To let the navy rot and build nothing in its place is not economy; it is only stupidness. To leave great cities undefended, liable to pillage, to leave wide open great opportunities for national disgrace, which it might cost uncounted millions to wipe away, is neither economy nor sense. All over the country the Democracy have girded at the last Congress because it wasted money, and yet no Democratic convention has ventured anywhere to specify a single item where money was wasted or the sin of extravagance committed. There was no charge of robbery, of undue influence, or bad conduct; only one loud outcry about the Billion Congress."

Mr. Reed asserts that there is a tendency through. out the various civilized countries of the world for government expenditures to increase at a greater rate than population, and in the following paragraph shows the nature of the increase in appropriations made by the last Congress :

"The increase in the annual appropriations for 1890-91 over those of the preceding fiscal year was, in round numbers, $75,000,000. The large items which went to make up this sum were five in number and easily understood. Of this sum, $25,000,000 was for the River and Harbor bill, which had the sanction of both parties, and which is likely to increase hereafter with the growth of the country.

Three millions went for coast defences. If there should be a war, the only complaint likely to be made is that such an increase was not made long ago. Thirty-four millions of increase was made for pensions, and five millions for extra deficiencies which the last House ought to have paid. Two and a half millions were added to the naval appropriations to enable the Navy Department to commence to build the big ships which were needed to complete our naval defences according to the scheme which had been approved by the department under all administrations. Five millions five hundred thousand more were imperatively demanded for the needs of the postal service, and so readily were its claims recognized that the Postal bill, which carried $72,000,000, went through the House with the approval of all parties in half as many minutes as there were millions."

The appropriations for the fiscal year 1891-92 were still further increased by about $40,000,000, the greater part of which increase is shown to have been due to expenditures for pensions, for the postal service, and for ship-building.

Mr. Reed takes evident delight in pointing out that the appropriations for pensions, the largest item of increase for the two years, were opposed by both Mr. Holman and Mr. Springer, on the grounds that they were too small.

"When you examine the figures of the last two Houses-one Democratic and the other Republican and charge off to each the rebates which belong to each, you will find," says Mr. Reed in conclusion, "that the last Democratic House voted the expenditure of $838,017, 972, just $85,978,813 more than its predecessor, also Democratic; that the last Republican House voted the expenditure of $948,800,734, an increase of $110,782,762 over the last Democratic House. The net increase, for which it has no Democratic precedent, was therefore $24,703,949. Inasmuch as the United States was two years older and two years bigger, this would not be a bad showing on general principles; but the fact that the Fifty-first Congress appropriated $288,000, 000 for pensions, against $177,000,000 appropriated by the Fiftieth, accounts for every cent of increase over the votes of the last Democratic House; and if there is any blame to be attributed to us for giving this large sum it cannot be made by the party which has just made Judge Holman Chairman of Appropriations, while on the records of Congress itself rests proof that this chosen representative of retrenchment and reform voted to double the very increase about which there has been so much undisciplined outcry."

"Close-fisted" Mr. Holman.

Judge Holman regards the action of the last Congress in enlarging appropriations to the sum of nearly a billion dollars as wholly indefensible. This is his account of how the public money was disbursed: The Fifty-first Congress created specifically 1,941 new offices, at an annual cost of $2,

359, 215, and increased the salaries of 403 officials in the aggregate $245, 108. 12—a record in this particular not approached by any other Congress assembled prior to or since the war, with the possible exception of the Forty-seventh Congress. It authorized the construction of new public buildings to cost in the aggregate $17,046, 639. 54; it appropriated $28,087,495 for river and harbor work, and in addition thereto authorized contracts to be entered into in the case of a few specific places obligating the Government in the further sum of $11,331,779, making a total of $39,419, 274 authorized expenditures for rivers and harbors, or more than 75 per centum increase over what was ever voted for this purpose by any other Congress; and, as if distrustful of its work being approved by the people, fastened its system of subsidies and bounties on the Government for years to come, rendering the House of Representatives powerless to correct the abuse until the periods named shall have expired. From the very beginning of that Congress unsatisfactory results had been apprehended. The rules, while arbitrary on one hand, opened up on the other unjustifiable facilities for the appropriation of money."

The bounty and subsidy grants voted by the same Congress are held to have been unnecessary appropriations. In closing, Mr. Holman gives a paragraph to ex-Speaker Reed and his parliamentary methods: "Mr. Reed's views were fully expressed in the rules of the Fifty-first Congress. The program fairly stated was simple and direct: the majority should control the House; obstructions and impediments should not be allowed; the House should be organized to ‘do business.' No one misapprehended the meaning of this- the excessive taxation of the people. Access to the treasury should not be obstructed by a discredited minority. Legislation should go on without hindrance. The result was natural enough-largely increased taxation of the people on the common necessaries of life, and a lavish expenditure of the people's money without any precedent in the history of the country."

METHODS OF RESTRICTING IMMIGRATION.

LINES along which our immigration laws might

be reformed are suggested in the following paragraphs, summarized from Senator William E. Chandler's article in the Forum for March:

First All laws should be passed which the Secretary of the Treasury may recommend to enable him fully and efficiently to enforce the existing statutory exclusions of bad immigrants.

Second: The greatest embarrassment in our present system of inspection being the painful necessity of often sending poor and miserable immigrants back three thousand miles over a weary waste of waters to a lot hopeless and helpless, new legislation should be so directed as to tend to prevent excluded persons from ever leaving their own country. Therefore heavier responsibilities should be placed upon the steamship companies. Laws and regulations should

be so framed and enforced that before long it may appear that no immigrants will have to be sent back, for the simple and satisfactory reason that the steamship companies will not dare to bring any about whose right to admission there is the slightest doubt.

Third: A law should be passed increasing the number of cubic feet of space on each steamship for each immigrant, and requiring better sanitary arrangements, going sufficiently into details to make sure there shall be few evasions and that violations of the law shall never go unpunished. There will be found needed for such immigrants as will be welcome to this country more and better accommodations on shipboard than the laws now require. They should not be demanded merely in order to make immigration more expensive and thereby to diminish its volume; but if humanity suggests the improved methods, they should not be omitted because such results may incidentally follow.

Fourth In further pursuance of the exceedingly meritorious idea of stopping immigrants on the other side of the ocean, instead of forcing them back from this side after their long and weary journey to the land of promise, there ought not to be any objection to allowing persons intending to come to the United States to prove to the satisfaction of our consuls or special officials abroad that our laws do not prohibit their immigration, and to obtain certificates accordingly.

Fifth The bonding system should be wholly abolished. When the inspectors, the Superintendent of Immigration, and the Secretary of the Treasury have decided, after summary proceedings, that aliens asking for admission are likely to become a public charge, these aliens should go back.

Sixth Concerning naturalization, the present laws passed in 1802 and 1824 allow aliens to become naturalized after five years' residence. If they come when over eighteen years of age, they must make a preliminary declaration at least two years before receiving their final papers. Whatever difference of opinion there may be as to the wisdom of adding to the above provisions an educational qualification or imposing other new conditions, there should be a general agreement to a requirement that an alien seeking his final papers shall give three months' notice in the court from which he asks such papers, so that the case may be inquired into and opposition made if the facts warrant it. The greatest abuses in naturalization grow out of the absence of such a notice.

THERE is a very interesting account of athletic sports at Oxford and Cambridge in the English Illustrated Magazine for March, which has some instantaneous photographs of high jumps and long jumps and finishes.

THERE is an interesting article in Cornhill for March, explaining how the Egyptian monuments were read.

THE WORLD'S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION.

THE

HE plan and scope of the World's Columbian Exposition and the organization of its various departments are somewhat fully described by Director-General George R. Davis in the North American Review for March. The work of the exposition has been divided into the following departments: A, agriculture; B, horticulture; C, live-stock; D, fish and fisheries; E, mines and mining; F, machinery; G, transportation exhibits; H, manufactures; I, electricity; K, fine arts; L, liberal arts; M, ethnology and archæology; N, forestry; O, publicity and promotion; P, foreign affairs. The buildings for these departments will cover an area of over one hundred and fifty acres.

Mr. Davis gives a summary of some of the proposed exhibits. Regarding the Department of Transportation exhibits, he says: "For the first time in the history of world's fairs, the science of transportation in its broadest sense will have that attention to which its importance entitles it. It falls within the plan and scope of this department to exhaustively present the origin, growth, and development of the various methods of transportation used in all ages and in all parts of the world. The means and appliances of barbarous and semi-civilized tribes are to be shown by specimen vehicles, trappings, and craft. Water craft, from the rudest forms to the modern giant steamship; wheeled vehicles, from the first inception of the idea to the latest development of the luxurious palace car, will be illustrated by the machine itself, or, in cases where this is impossible, by accurate models, drawings, plans, and designs.

"The exhibit of the Department of Manufactures is destined to be one of the very greatest interest, embracing, as it does, the products of the machine and man's unequalled handiwork in every form and design. The constantly increasing interest among our home producers and the ever-growing rivalry of inventive genius in the way of improved machinery will be amply illustrated, and will form one of the most instructive features of the exposi tion.

"The field of the Liberal Arts Department is a broad one, covering nearly every phase of the higher development of the race. The most complete showing of the educational system of the country that has ever been attempted is proposed, the program covering the entire field of primary, secondary, and superior education. It provides for an exhaustive illustration of the methods of instruction in all grades, from the kindergarten up to the colleges and universities.

"The Department of Horticulture will embrace the most elaborate and complete classification of its peculiar interests ever presented, arranged in the most comprehensive manner, to display all rare and choice fruits and plants of the earth. Tropical fruits and berries of the central latitudes will be abundantly exhibited, and varieties or species not ob

tainable at certain seasons will be represented by wax or plaster-cast imitations. Fruits dried, canned, glacéd, preserved by chemical or coldstorage appliances, manufactured into jellies, jams, or marmalades, will illustrate the most approved means of conserving surplus products. Methods of crushing and expressing juices of fruits will be shown, and literature and statistics will form an instructive feature of the exhibit. So much for the pomological group.

"The chief of the Department of Fine Arts has been abroad for many months, visiting the galleries of all the nations of Europe, and paving the way for a display which promises a higher degree of excellence than any ever before achieved at any exhibition of fine arts. One leading object of this department is to form a collection of art works which shall be in the highest degree interesting and instructive to the visitor to the exposition-such a collection as will give one a higher appreciation of art and a desire for further knowledge, which may be satisfied by a study of the collection; such a collection, also, as may enable one to become acquainted with the characteristics of the best art of all nations, induce comparison, and develop critical judgment."

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ALIENS AND AMERICAN REAL ESTATE. N the March Harper's Edward Anthony Bradford ment in the Federal Congress and in certain State legislatures toward restricting the property rights of aliens. His paper—which he heads “ America for the Americans" in quotation-marks of irony-takes the ground that such legislation is in principle narrow-minded and a return to semi-barbarous exclusiveness, and that in practice the undeveloped parts of our country will be seriously hampered by this absurd rejection of the capital which is enabling them to advance so rapidly in material prosperity. Furthermore, the constitutionality of such measures, clearly denying the alien rights accorded in several special treaties, comes easily into question.

Mr. Bradford thinks that the sensational reports of enormous foreign holdings of land have been much Exaggerated by over-zealo is "patriotism."

"It is frankly conceded," he says, "or rather contended, that the system of small tenancies by actual residents is much the best foundation for personal and national prosperity. The gorge rises at reading of principalities reserved for deer forests while homeless human beings starve. Any effort to import and fasten such a system on us would be a grievous misfortune. No one anywhere has been heard to defend such a thing, least of all in these pages. But it is not necessary to abolish private property because millionaires exist, nor to place ourselves outside the comity of civilization because yarns are told about aliens.”

In all cases in which this narrow policy has been tried, says this writer, it has received the hearty

condemnation of the people whom it was supposed to protect. The mining districts, so dependent on European capital, suffer quickest and most, but even in Texas, a farming and grazing region, the outcry has been general and vehement against the restrictions on aliens which, last April, superseded the very liberal laws which had previously obtained in that State.

"It may be a misfortune that 'thousands' of Texas citizens and tens of thousands of Americans are living on lands and in houses mortgaged to foreign

ers.

It is to be regretted, perhaps, that foreign wealth has the ability, the courage, the foresight, the belief in our future, to buy our land. But, on the other hand, the imagination shrinks appalled from the conception of the blow to our prosperity which would follow the withdrawal of this very real and very necessary help to our development. Would it not be wiser to legislate against the evils we feel and know, rather than against those we imagine? Whatever may come in a distant future, it is certain that there is now no monopoly of land."

INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS OF THE SOUTH.

GEN. E. P. ALEXANDER has an article in the

March number of the Forum on the "Industrial Progress of the South."

A fair indication of the growing prosperity of the Southern States is seen in the increase in the assessed valuation of property from $2,900,000,000 in 1880 to $4,800,000,000 in 1890. During the last ten years the production of cotton has increased more than one-third, and the quantity consumed by Southern mills in 1891 was more than twice as great as that in 1881.

"Of her tobacco, sugar, rice, naval stores, and pine and cypress lumber, the other leading products peculiar to her soil and climate, similar statistics could be given. But perhaps the most remarkable development in the industrial history of the United States has been that of the coal and iron ores of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama within even the past ten years. From being almost nonproducers of coal and pig-iron, these States have now reached an annual output of about 2,000,000 tons of pig-iron and 20,000,000 tons of coal. The proximity of coking coals and limestone to inexhaustible beds of iron ore of fine quality permits the production of iron under the most favorable conditions possible, and it is claimed that the future centre of the steel and iron industries of the continent will be along the valley between the Cumberland and Blue Ridge ranges extending from Virginia through Tennessee into Alabama. Thus, in addition to the development of her own products, we see the South entering into competition with the North in manufactures, with conditions in her favor that must tell very powerfully as competition becomes closer. And in these days of wonderful

Besides these larger industries many smaller ones are being developed: "Fish and oysters from the South Atlantic and Gulf States reach ever-increasing markets in the interior. Early fruits and vegetables are sent in enormous quantities as far north as Canada and the Lakes. Watermelons, unknown as an article of transportation ten years ago, now tax the capacity of many Southern roads in their season, formerly the dullest of the year. Dried and canned fruits are shipped by the train-load, and the Florida orange is crossing the ocean to England after running the Mediterranean fruit off this continent in its season.

"In brief," concludes Mr. Alexander, "there is not elsewhere upon the globe a territory open to the Anglo-Saxon race with such varied and great resources and such propitious and easy conditions of life and labor, so abundantly supplied with rivers, harbors, and with lines of railroad transportation, or so well located to command the commerce of both hemispheres."

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Ο

THE NORTHERN CREED OF '61.

NE of the familiar effects of good, honest fighting is the mutual respect of the combatants for each other," says Gen. Jacob Dolson Cox in his Atlantic Monthly inquiry into "Why the Men of '61 Fought for the Union." As an evidently unconscious example of this "familiar effect," the writer takes occasion, but a few sentences later, to pay a splendid tribute to "the Johns Hopkins professor of philology," who two months ago stated the other side of the question so admirably in his parallel essay on "The Creed of the Old South."

But General Cox loses no time in taking issuecourteously enough-with the veterans of the Old South on the point of departure. While he readily admits that Professor Gildersleeve and many men of his ilk throughout Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina were fighting from loyalty to their State, and not at all to perpetuate slavery, he contends that this cannot in any wise be said of the Gulf States; and from the Northerner's standpoint the history of the decade preceding '61 shows clearly that in judging motives, one must go back further than the ordinances of secession.

"Our Northern people had accepted the Websterian doctrine of nationality, which left them in no doubt as to the theoretic question of power, but they did not fight for that. They elected Mr. Lincoln President with the avowed purpose of preventing the formation of another slave State from any of the Territories of the United States. In doing so they reversed the decision of the majority of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, where the right to prohibit the spread of slavery had been

denied, and the practice of our Government from the free-territory ordinance of 1787 downward had been declared unconstitutional. That election, on that platform, was, beyond all question or dispute, the overt act on which the States which led off in secession based their action. They resolved on revolutionary secession as soon as the election proved that the free-state movement was strong enough to accomplish its purpose."

To show that in at least the more Southern States of the South this was patently recognized as the casus belli, General Cox quotes at length from the official declarations by the State of Mississippi of the causes which led it to secede.

A large part of General Cox's paper is taken up with a masterly sketch of the generation and growth of the anti-slavery creed in the North-the sudden evolution of the little knot of extremists about William Lloyd Garrison in 1855 into the great party which elected Lincoln. There was a presentiment of the great struggle in the North, and General Cox tells of midnight oil spent in conning the tactical history of the great European wars.

"When the guns opened upon Sumter, it was a great shock, with all the effect of a surprise, in spite of our efforts to anticipate it. We could hear our hearts beat as if it were the echo of Anderson's replying cannon; but I think there was not one moment's hesitation as to our duty, or one doubt as to either the righteousness or the transcendent worth of our cause. So we in the North went into the fight, at least such of us as were anti-slavery men, bred in the bone."

Of the racial problem, which he calls "the great problem of the future for the whole country,” this writer asks, "Who can find a solution of the dif ficulty, unless the élite of the South, in cultivation and in conscience, apply themselves to the task?"

Concerning that other still vexing afterglow of the great conflagration of '61, the pension system, General Cox speaks some generous words about Southern patience under the increasing call to help support other than the South's "maimed and crippled and broken-down."

"Peace societies," he concludes, “may also see some compensation in our policy, and other nations may look on with complacency, if not with pleasure; for if ever heavy bonds were given to abstain from war, they are surely given by a people which has, for an indefinite time, adopted the system of paying nearly twice as much per annum for its disbanded armies as the greatest military power of Europe pays for its standing ones."

THERE is a good sensible sermon concerning the need of speaking to the century so as to be understood by the men to whom you are speaking, in the Catholic World, by the Rev. William Barry. It is an address to the Convention of the Apostolate of the Press.

A PAGE OF RECENT SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY. From a Dutch Point of View.

ME

R. W. F. ANDRIESSEN, in Vragen des Tijds for February, publishes, under the above title, a severe indictment against Mr. Cecil Rhodes and the Chartered Company. Their action is asserted to be simply in accordance with the traditional English policy of greed and intolerance and philan. thropy falsely so called, which has gradually driven the unoffending Boer (whose only demand is "a free field and no neighbors") out of Cape Colony into Natal, out of Natal into the Transvaal, and is now driving him out of that into Mashonaland and Bechuanaland, and then heading him off with the company's charter and the rights of native tribes. He feels ill at ease if he can see from his front door the smoke of another chimney; and so, as population increases, no wonder he wants to inspan and trek for the north and freedom. If the north were, as a matter of fact, vacant and unoccupied, it would, indeed, be the height of unwarrantable interference to grudge it to him; but it is not, and though we have plenty of unjust and violent acts to accuse ourselves of, we need not cry peccavi for restraining him from exterminating and enslaving the former occupants-even at the risk of enduring a multiplied prospect of chimneys.

The republics of Stellaland and Goshen-the result of a westward trek some years back-were knocked on the head in 1884, when the British protectorate over Bechuanaland was recognized, which created much ill-feeling is spite of the concessions made to the Transvaal in the same treaty. This state of things was not improved when, as Mr. Andriessen puts it, the Boers trekked to the assistance of Dinuzlu against Zibebu, and had 16, 200 square kilometres of Zululand assigned them as a reward. With great difficulty England was persuaded to recognize this "New Republic" in 1886, but only on condition that the Boers gave up all claim to the coast.

THE BANYAILAND CONCESSION.

So far nothing has been said concerning the South Africa Company-but now comes the greatest griev ance of all. A certain Mr. Adendorff had obtained from two native chiefs an extensive concession in Banyailand, between the Limpopo and the Sabisouth of what is now known as Mashonaland, or, according to some authorities, forming part of it. The Transvaal Boers were restless and ripe for another trek and a fresh new republic. Mr. Rhodes disputed the validity of the Adendorff concession, on the ground that the whole country, of which Banyailand formed a part, was subject to Lobingula.

Mr. Adendorff, on the other hand, maintained that the three chiefs, Kutu, Chibi, and China (two of whom had signed the concessions), were independent of Lobingula-had, indeed, no suzerain. They had, in former times, been subject to a great chief