VOL. XXIV.

No. 6

Congress.

A

The Fifty-seventh Congress, chosen The New last year on the date of the Presiden. tial election, begins the work of its first session on Monday, December 2. Like its predecessor, the Fifty-sixth Congress, it is strongly Republican. Both branches, indeed, of the new Congress have a slightly increased Republican majority. In round figures there are about 200 Republicans and 150 Democrats in the House of Representatives, the Populists and Silverites numbering only 6 or 8. In the Senate there are several vacant seats, and Delaware, notably, is without representation owing to the protracted deadlock in the Legislature caused by the persistence of the fight for and against Addicks. full Senate consists of 90 members, and the Republicans have a working plurality of about 20. An unusually large proportion of the members of the last House of Representatives have been reëlected. For example, all but one of Indiana's 13 members belonged to the last Congress. There is only one new member in Iowa's delega. tion of 11. In Missouri's 15 seats there is not a single change. The delegations from Maine and Connecticut, from Georgia and Louisiana, from New Jersey and Minnesota, remain exactly as in the Fifty-sixth Congress. Eleven out of the 12 Michigan members are reëlected, and in a number of other States there are only one or two changes. Generally speaking, the very strong Republican States of the North and the solid Democrátic States of the South have returned their old representatives. But changes are more numerous in the States where parties are somewhat evenly divided. Thus, New York's delegation of 34 members contains 12 men who did not sit in the last Congress, and there are 9 new members from Ohio in a total delegation of 21. Illinois has 6 new members in a total of 22, and Pennsylvania 8 or 9 in a delegation of 30.

Organization of the House.

Thus, in personnel, and also, presuma bly, in organization, the Fifty-seventh Congress will be very much like its predecessor. It seems to be agreed that the Hon. David B. Henderson, of Iowa, is again to be chosen by the House as its Speaker, in which case there will devolve upon him the delicate and responsible task of appointing the committees. But this will be an easier undertaking than usual, because undoubtedly the committees will in the main stand as they were in the Fifty-sixth Congress, most of the principal chairmanships being retained by their former holders. The most important is the Committee on Ways and Means, of which the chairman, since the death of Mr. Dingley, of Maine, has been Sereno E. Payne, of New York. Of similarly high rank is the Committee on Appropriations, at the head of which has been Joseph G. Cannon, of Illinois. A committee that is likely to have great special importance in the work of the new Congress is that dealing with the isthmian canal question, of which William P. Hepburn, of Iowa, has been chairman. Of the Committee on Military Affairs, John A. T. Hull, of Iowa, served as chairman through the period of the Spanish and Philippine wars and the reorganization of the regular army. With 40,000 troops still remaining in the Philippines, and the varied interests of the remodeled army, Mr. Hull's committee will continue to be one of very great importance.

bers of Congress must feel the more sense of responsibility for their own views and votes, since it will be less easy than at some former times to support merely partisan programmes or to follow comfortably in line behind recognized leaders. Thus, on a number of important questions it is going to be found unusually difficult to persuade members of Congress to accept and support a given position as a test of party allegiance. There is a wide difference of opinion, for example, about steamship subsidies; and it does not seem likely that the Republicans could be united upon any subsidy scheme that they would accept as embodying party policy. It is quite possible that a similar difficulty may be encountered in respect to the question of making large trade concessions to Cuba, and also as regards the more general questions of reciprocity, tariff-revision, reduction of internal-revenue taxes, and other problems of trade policy and taxation. While there is no reason to look forward to factional divisions among the Republicans on these or on other

Copyright by Bilbrough, Dubuque.

HON. DAVID B. HENDERSON, OF IOWA.

until after a Vice-President is elected in 1904

and inaugurated in 1905. The Senate appoints its own committees, and the presiding officer merely acts as chairman in the strict parliamentary sense. Senator Frye has stood first on the list of members of the Committee on Foreign Relations since the death of Senator Davis, of Minnesota, who was chairman of that committee. Inasmuch as the Senate usually observes the seniority principle, this chairmanship would naturally have devolved upon Mr. Frye if he had desired it. But he prefers to retain his chairmanship of the Committee on Commerce, a position that he justly regards as one of great and ever-growing importance. Next on the list of members of the Foreign Relations Committee is Senator Cullom, of Illinois, and it is expected that he will be made chairman.

The

Prospect.

Congress assembles at a time of very Legislative great harmony in the Republican party, and in a general period of good will throughout the country in which patriotism is at full flood and mere party feeling at low ebb. It does not follow, however, that the situation is an inviting one for any particular programme of legislation. There has seldom been so little leadership in either party that Congress and the country have been inclined to recognize as highly authoritative. This need not be a matter for regret, for it only means that the individual mem

sm seemed to call for the upholding of President McKinley's hands, and the measures that he favored-financial, military, and otherwise-were loyally adopted by Congress in a spirit that added much to the impression of firm purpose and united front that this country was making upon the world at large. There is no reason to think that Congress will not attach due weight to the

SENATOR CULLOM, OF ILLINOIS.

views and recommendations of President Roosevelt. But after a period of strenuous public activity the time has arrived for careful deliberation and full debate, and the Fifty-seventh Congress is likely to prove itself a rather careful and conservative body.

President

men in private life qualified to speak for substantial interests,-whether labor, finance, industrial capital, protected manufactures, or shipping, and to representatives of the interests of localities, such as particular States or insular possessions. By virtue of this plan of conferring with leading public men and with representatives of particular interests or places, the President has come to have a knowledge of the immediate drifts and currents of American public opinion that no other man can be said to possess so completely. Such an understanding could but lend an air of firm grasp to the President's discussion of leading questions in his first message. Naturally, he will be in full harmony with the positions of the Cabinet officers touching their respective departments, but he will not follow the custom of embodying in the message a summary of departmental information.

Meanwhile, the President's Message Roosevelt's will not have occasioned much, if Message. any, surprise or disquietude. Mr. Roosevelt recognizes to the utmost the dignity and responsibility of Congress as a coördinate branch of the Government, and he will do his full part to maintain that harmony of view and spirit of coöperation and mutual respect between the executive and legislative branches that are always necessary in this country if anything whatever is to be accomplished. To that end the President has taken the principal leaders and chairmen of committees of both houses into his confidence during the preparation of his message, and he has also listened willingly to

The Isthmian Canal Commission, of Canal Report and New Treaty which Admiral Walker is the chairReady. man, appointed three years ago, was expected to have its final report ready for transmission to Congress in December, and to that end was in session at Washington last month. A million dollars had been appropriated for the use of this commission in the making of surveys and the supply to Congress and the country of more complete information than had ever before been obtained. The preliminary reports of this commission favored the Nicaragua route. Within the past few weeks the officers of the French Panama Canal Company have been conferring with

the canal commissioners at Washington with the object of bringing about a purchase of their unfinished work by the United States. It is probable that Congress and the country will continue to prefer the Nicaragua route as amended and supported by the Walker Commission. It is expected that President Roosevelt will strongly advocate the construction of an isthmian canal with as little delay as possible. He will be prepared to transmit to the Senate a new treaty with England to supersede the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. This was signed at the State department by Secretary Hay and Lord Pauncefote on November 18. The Isthmian Canal Commission has embodied a very high order of engineering talent, and there is every reason to believe that its services have been rendered with the utmost thoroughness, industry, and fidelity, as well as with zeal and the spirit of patriotism.

Lindsay, took expert charge for the commission of portions of its work relating to transportation, railway labor, etc. One of the most important subjects considered was that of the socalled trust movement, this portion of the investigation being especially in charge of Professor Jenks, of Cornell University. These massive volumes, like those in which the Isthmian Canal Commission has reported its studies and conclusions, are a veritable mine of valuable information for the guidance of Congress and the instruction of the country. The report of this Industrial Commission will be made at a favorable moment, because the public mind is exceptionally open to conviction, and there has not for a long time been so little disposition to act first and think afterward.

Office.

The data of various kinds comprised A New Cabinet in the report of the Industrial Commission will be peculiarly pertinent in view of the proposition to create a new cabinet portfolio of commerce and industry. It is understood that President Roosevelt will recommend the creation of such a department. The relation of the Government to commerce and industry is already vast and intricate; and the history of the early future of the United States is destined more than ever before to be a history of industry and trade. Every great modern government exists in large part for the sake of safeguarding and developing the economic activities of the people. The government of England, especially, is commercial in its motive. The pending question of tariff reciprocity in this country, for example, is not one that concerns primarily the national exchequer, that is to say, is not essentially a question of public finance; but it is rather a question of trade policy affecting labor and capital. In like manner the pending question of steamship subsidies is one that does not concern primarily any of the existing executive departments. The oversight of the country's trade does not belong in the nature of the case to the State Department or the Treasury Department; but it would afford very important functions for a department of commerce. If great corporations and combinations of capital are in the future to be brought under national supervision, whether with or without a constitutional amendment, such oversight must be exercised through executive officers; and the interests involved are of such magnitude that it would hardly seem feasible to deal with them through a bureau or a permanent commission attached either to the Treasury or the Interior Department. A hundred considerations, in short, point toward the advisability of a new executive department headed by an officer of cabinet rank to concern itself with matters of national commerce and industry. It would seem as if the creation of such a department, and the appointment of an energetic and able man at the head of it, with assistants possessing scientific knowledge and administrative ability, might prove to be the necessary point of departure for a gradual reconstruction of American policy respecting the national economic life.

rial leaders argued that the business of the country is in good condition, that the country has borne magnificently the shock that came with the assassination of President McKinley, that we have gone through the excitement and distraction of a foreign war, with its accompaniment of military and territorial expansion, and that on every account it would be unwise to enter now upon a line of legislative action that might seriously disturb the course of business prosperity. Certainly, if it is to be only at the expense of a protracted and passionate agitation that anything can be accomplished for a modification of the tariff, or the adoption of a reciprocity policy, there is wisdom in the conservatism of these Senatorial leaders. But there is no good reason why henceforth the tariff question should be the foot ball of political parties. It ought to be possible to introduce considerable modifications in several schedules by common consent, so to speak, and without any harmful agitation whatsoever. Our industries, generally speaking, have reached a point of maturity. How best to safeguard and promote their further development, while giving due consideration to the status of American labor, is a subject that calls for patient and skillful inquiry on the part of statesmen, business men, and political economists. Meanwhile, the country is doing very well indeed, and there is no need whatever for abrupt action.

Wanted: The

The great demand of the day in all Facts in the departments of life and activity is for Case. real knowledge. The isthmian-canal question has been before the country for several decades, yet Congress was doubtless justified in expending a million dollars for this latest inquiry in acknowledgment of the fact that the requisite information was still lacking upon which to base action so momentous as the construction of an interoceanic waterway. It is almost inevitable that Congress will decide that the country cannot take up the ship-subsidy question without far more knowledge than it now possesses. The more that topic is discussed the plainer does it become that almost nobody understands it at all. There is an oft-quoted remark of Bismarck's to the effect that only two men-himself and one other had ever understood the Schleswig-Holstein question, and that the other man was long since dead. Before a country like ours can enter upon an important phase of economic policy like the paying of subsidies to develop the business of sailing merchant ships under the American flag there must be a great many men who firmly believe that they understand the subject in its principal bearings. With all deference to those who have been prominent in its recent discussion,

we may venture to assert the belief that there are not 25 people out of the 75,000,000 inhabitants of the United States who could pass an examination that would show them sufficiently wise and well-informed to proceed at once to formulate an American policy for developing the merchant marine by means of ship subsidies.

There are a great many more men, As to Reci- doubtless, who could pass an intelliprocity. gent examination upon the subject of tariff reciprocity. But this subject also is one that offers difficulties of a most exasperating na ture; and it requires most careful study and examination. Reciprocity as Mr. Blaine conceived of it a dozen years ago was a part of his large western-hemisphere policy, which had its political as well as its commercial bearings. His thought was not of trade reciprocity between the United States and Europe, but rather of the establishment of direct communication between the United States and the Latin republics on the plan of opening our ports to West Indian sugar and tobacco, and to South American coffee, hides, and other leading products, in exchange for concessions that would admit American goods to those countries on terms greatly superior to those granted to European countries. The future historian of American political and trade policy will probably justify Mr. Blaine's proposal as statesmanlike in a high sense, being peculiarly adapted to the conditions that existed at that time; and the historian will recite as singularly unfortunate the series of political accidents and partisan decisions that thwarted and blighted Mr. Blaine's brilliant policy. But the conditions are more complicated to-day, and it would be correspondingly difficult to set forth a consistent and acceptable plan of reciprocity. It was evident last month that practical business men, irrespective of party lines, were proposing to take these questions of reciprocity and tariffrevision into their own hands. An important convention of manufacturers, under the chairmanship of Mr. Theodore C. Search, of Philadelphia, met at Washington to formulate their views in favor of a reciprocity policy. On the other hand, a league of American agricultural producers, under the special direction of Mr. Herbert Myrick, was preparing to resist to the utmost any concessions in favor of Cuban or other foreign sugar or tobacco, while a delegation from Cuba arrived at Washington to present arguments and petitions for the opening of the American market to Cuba's chief productions. It will be found hard indeed to reconcile the diverse views that will be presented to Congress. In this matter, therefore, as in others, the one