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No. 19.

Thursday, September 25, 1890.

Published weekly by J. MORRISON-FULLER, at 13 Somerset Street, Boston, Mass.

SUBSCRIPTION, $1.00 PER YEAR.

IN MEDIAS RES.

On Sept. 12th, Representative Burton, of Ohio, introduced a bill to regulate the division of States into Congressional districts.

The bill provides that within twelve months after the passage of an apportionment act the States shall be divided into Congressional districts, by a districting board in each State, composed of four resident members, two of each political party, to be appointed by the governors. Districts are to consist of contiguous territory, and no district is to have more than one member. A district is not to be divided unless its population exceeds by one tenth the number necessary to entitle it to a representative except in States electing Representatives by towns, and no district is to contain more than one twentieth more or less inhabitants than the number necessary to entitle it to a Representative. Districts are to be composed of compact territory, bounded as nearly as may be by civil subdivisions or natural boundaries. There is to be a national board of five members, four politically divided and the other a judge of the Supreme, District, or Circuit United States Court, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, to act in case of failure to act, or disagreement among the State boards. The districts made by these board are to remain intact until the next census apportionment.

The House, on Sept. 15th, after two-hours' debate, voted non-concurrence in the Senate amendments to the McKinley Tariff Bill.

A remonstrance has been made by tea dealers against the Senate amendment to the Tariff Bill laying a tax of ten per cent on teas produced east of the Cape of Good Hope, and imported from places west of that point.

Price 5 Cents.

Devoted to the record of the facts and considerations which show that Individual Liberty is good for the people of the United States: And that, therefore, Legislative Regulation is injurious for them.

The dealers charge that this amendment was made at the instigation of a few tea dealers, who seek to confine the importation of tea to the products of those countries where it is most difficult for small dealers to send orders, thus creating a monopoly for a few. They also declare that the measure, while avowedly aimed against Canada, will have its real effect in the London market, where American merchants buy more than nine tenths of the higher average qualities of teas.

On Sept. 12th a bill was introduced in the Senate by Senator Blair, by request of the W. C. T. U., to prohibit the importation, exportation, and interstate transportation of alcoholic beverages. The bill was referred to the Committee on Education and Labor.

The House Anti-Lottery Bill was taken from the calendar and passed without discussion by the Senate, on Sept. 16th.

Sen

On the same day, the conference report on the Railroad Land Forfeiture Bill was agreed to by the Senate. According to Senator Plumb's estimate, probably 10,000,000 acres of land will revert to the public domain under the conference report. Most of this will come from the Northern Pacific grant, and a considerable portion from the Southern Pacific and the Atlantic Pacific grants. ator Morgan opposed the report as a logrolling scheme, gotten up for the benefit of land-grant roads. The first section professed to be for forfeiture, but the other sections, relating to separate railroads, exempted them from the operation of the forfeiture section, or else secured them pecuniary advantages in other ways. The most that could be said for the bill, Senator Morgan held, was that a few

small railroads, that had not enough friends in Congress, were to be crucified for the sake of glossing over and varnishing the false pretence of a general forfeiture.

The colored farmers of the South remonstrate against the passage of the Conger Compound-Lard Bill by the Senate. The New York Wholesale Grocers' Association have also formally protested against the bill as having a tendency to entirely suppress a wholesome article of food through burdensome discrimination against its manufacture and sale.

Owing to the perpetual absence of a quorum, little business is being transacted in the House. On Sept. 18th the speaker ordered all the doors of the House to be locked, to prevent the Democratic members from leaving it during roll-call; but the Democrats resented this enforced imprisonment, and forced back the fastenings, and opened the door, striking in the face and bruising the nose of a member who happened to be approaching the door from the other side. The Republicans are short about twenty members, some of whom are ill, and others neglectful of their duties, and indifferent to party success because of their failure to secure renominations. Representative Walker introduced an amendment to a previous resolution of his relative to the rules on roll-calls. The amendment provides that any member who is in the hall at any time during the roll-call, and who fails to vote when the yeas and nays are called shall be fined $40, the amount to be deducted from his pay.

In the Senate, on Sept. 18th, Senator Plumb offered a resolution directing the

Secretary of the Treasury to inform the Senate whether the rule or policy of his department which requires the payment of checks for silver bullion over the counter of the subtreasury, instead of through the proper Clearing House, does not result in paying out notes of the larger denominations instead of those suited for circulation and use in ordinary business transactions, and whether such method of payment does not result in the payment of gold, instead of Treasury notes."

The resolution was agreed to. In supporting the resolution, Senator Plumb protested against the Treasury's "malicious interference with the business of the country," a conspicuous illustration of which interference,

he said, had taken place within the last few weeks. Senator Sherman said he doubted the wisdom of the policy of paying a year's interest on bonds in advance, but he thought that the secretary should be permitted to use his discretion.

On Sept. 19th Senator Blair introduced a bill (in behalf of the Woman's National League) prohibiting the smoking of cigars or cigarettes and the use of tobacco in gencral by minors in public places and streets in the District of Columbia, under penalties of fine or of imprisonment.

In protesting against the Compound-Lard Bill, Representative Stockdale, of Mississippi, said:

I have arrived at the conclusion, by their own statements, that the advocates of the bill support it purely on the ground and for the object stated by my colleague (Mr. Catchings), to tax this commodity out of existence.

They say they do not want to put a tax on it, and if any other way could be arrived at to compel the people who manufacture it to brand the article for what it is, they would be satisfied. That is a confession that there is no authority in the Constitution to compel a man to brand what he makes, unless it is arrived at through a subterfuge. You use the Constitution as a pretence; that is, you use the article of the Constitution authorizing Congress to raise revenue not for the purpose of revenue, but to get at another object, which is to burden one industry that another may flourish: drive one class out to give place to another more favored class, which is, I say, using the Constitution in the letter to violate it in the spirit.

A man has a right, I take it, to go into Illinois and buy lard. He has a right to go to Tennessee or Mississippi and buy cotton-seed oil. What then? They are both his property. He undertakes to mix the two, because it makes a product easy to handle in a warm climate and is cheaper to the consumer; it is as good for food; it is as wholesome, as nutritious, and as palatable as the lard alone. Both are his property, and he compounds them together. Has he not a right to do so, and to sell them compounded or separately? But you say: "No, he shall not do that; he shall not sell his own property." . .

It is legislation to push back one set of citizens and to lift up another by the power of the Federal Government. It is not according to the Constitution. It is not according to the principles of American industry. Why, you talk about protection, and call this robbery! What does robbery consist of? This was denounced as robbery to-day. Why, you say it consists in combining cotton-seed oil with lard by men who have purchased and own both. You seek to deprive them of their industry, and say that

it cannot be continued. Is there any difference between that and the wool-growers asking here for a bill to provide that the manufacturers shall not mix cotton with wool, with silk, or with anything else without paying a tax or getting a license for it?

Probably there is not a gentleman in the House who has not cotton in the clothing he wears. Why not make a law against such a mixture? Why should not the silk manufacturers ask Congress to pass a law that there should be no cotton in silk; that there shall be no mixture of wool in silk; no mixture of anything? It is precisely the same principle; and whenever you open the door and permit this Government to enter into a policy whereby one class of citizens can come to Congress and successfully ask that their particular industry be protected, not against foreign powers or foreign labor but against another legitimate industry within the borders of our own country, you strike down the very principles of the Government.

IN GENERAL.

A press despatch from Zanzibar announces that the German authorities at Bagamayo have published a notice permitting the slave traffic, and authorizing the dealers to recover runaways. Slaves are openly bought at street

auctions.

The discovery of the spread of immorality among school children in Munich has led to the establishment of a separate class in public schools for girls who are to become, or have become, mothers, so that by seclusion they may be prevented, while finishing their terms of compulsory education, from endangering

the morals of their school-fellows. It has also been found necessary to adopt the same system of a separate class in the Berlin public schools.

[This does not refer to co-educational schools, but to ordinary girls' schools. — ED.]

The reappearance of hunger typhus in upper Silesia is attributed to the high-tariff duty on corn and the exclusion of foreign meat produce.

Col. Weber, of the Immigration Bureau at the Barge office, has written to Secretary Windom that, in his opinion, the section of the Passenger Act of 1882 which provides that no passenger shall leave the vessel without the permission of the customs officer in charge should be applied to cabin passengers as well as to steerage passengers, and that the customs inspectors are bound to stop all cabin pas

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