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OUR AMERICAN LETTER.
[From our own Correspondent.]
New York, December 9, 1889.
The new Republican Congress has for-
mally begun its session, and for the first
time since 1874 we have what may be
termed a homogeneous Government—
that is, a Government in which the Presi-
dent, the Senate, and the House of Repre-
sentatives are of one party. But even
with the members from the new states
the Republican majority in the House is
less than 10, and this is certainly not a
"working" force. Squabbling has
already begun, and in a few weeks it is
almost inevitable that the proceedings
will degenerate into chronic "filibuster-
ing," or, as it is better known per-
haps in English Legislatures, "ob-
struction." Many of the southern
members have notoriously been elected by
fraud, but it will be extremely tedious
work to put them out and seat the Re-
publican contestants In their stead. Our
legislative rules are sterner and less
tolerant of minority rights than those
which prevail anywhere else; but the
opposition still has the power to make
itself disagreeable. It will be only under
the most favorable conditions that the
Republicans can have a clear majority
present—that is, all of their members ex-
cept nine; and without such a majority,
under our rules, the Democrats can at
any moment by merely absenting them-
selves from their seats bring all business
to a dead stop. The great outside public,
therefore, are congratulating themselves on
the fact that the Congress is almost powerless
for mischief, and that the only legislation
probable during the coming session will
be such as both parties agree in regarding
as necessary and proper.
The President has set upon himself the
final seal of hopeless failure. Like Mr.
Cleveland, he has been undone by a
message to Congress. Like Mr. Cleveland,
too, he insisted upon writing it himself,
alone and unaided, and the result in this
instance as in the other has been an
universal chorus of disapproval from
the Atlantic to the Pacific. There is,
however, this difference between the
two cases. Cleveland was blamed because
he told us too plainly what he really
thought; Harrison is blamed because he
shirks a positive expression of opinion
even on matters as to which both parties
are in accord. The country awakens to
the fact that we now have an administra-
tion without a policy, and what is known
as the "hereditary principle" receives
another blow. Harrison would never
have been thought of as a candidate but
for the fact that his grandfather had been
president; and that the descendant of an
illustrious race should betray himself in
this way as a poor flabby-minded creature
seems almost like a violation of the estab-
lished laws of development.
Harrison's incapacity may not im-
probably wreck his party. A year ago the
Republicans seemed secure of a 20 years'
lease of power, but their prospects are now
very much less favorable. Indeed only
one hope remains for them, which is that
Mr. Blaine should come once more openly
into the foreground. All through this
administration Blaine and his friends have
managed to get the lion's share of the
patronage, and Blaine's especial part of
the public business—the Samoa matter
and the Pan-American Congress—has
been conducted creditably and well; but it
has been made apparent in many ways that
he did not choose to make himself generally
responsible for Mr. Harrison. The
glory of rescuing a sinking party may now
tempt him from his comparative retire-
ment, and in that event the ship of State
will have to encounter all the perils of a
"brilliant" policy. Three projects are
now credited to him, not without some
show of authority—the acquisition of the
Sandwich Islands, the purchase of Cuba,
and an active agitation of the Canadian
troubles. He may be innocent of all of
them, but if he were seriously to take the
helm of the administration, as now seems
likely, we should certainly soon have
something to talk about.
The Pan-American Congress threatens
to be a very long-winded affair indeed.
They have taken a month to agree
upon the rules which shall govern their
deliberations, and to us poor Americans
some of those rules seem very bad ones.
All the delegates except our own were
unanimous in insisting upon unrestricted
freedom of speech; that is, any delegate
now has a right to speak as often and as
long as he likes on any one subject. Then
it is established that a power is only to be
held bound to support such Acts of the
conference as it votes for in the affirmative;
even if it is in a minority of one it is in
no way to be held constrained in honor to
abide by the decision of the majority.
The American delegates, however, cheer-
fully let the others have their way in the
assured belief that at any rate in succeed-
ing Congresses regulations better adapted
for the prompt and effective dispatch of
business will be adopted. On the other
hand, the foreign delegates have not been
entirely pleased with some incidents that
have occurred during their stay here. The
dress coat business has caused a great deal
of dissatisfaction. In public receptions,
especially at the west, we are a little care-
less about such conventionalities; indeed
in some localities colored ties and sac
coats are allowed to pass muster even in
the most select companies. But the Pan-
Americans have inherited strict European
notions as to the innate and esoteric
meaning of costume; and, always appear-
ing themselves in full dress, have felt
humiliated, and almost insulted, at
the lack of a like rigorous regard for
the proprieties in their hosts. Such
difficulties culminated at Philadelphia.
The Union League Club of that city ten-
dered the Pan-Americans a reception, and
provided tons of chicken and lobster salad,
and untold cases of champagne to celebrate
the event. When the Pan-Americans ar-
rived they were escorted by the com-
mittee into a large room, at one side of
which there was erected a sort of dais, and
the guests were ranged on this in much
the same fashion as the fat woman and
the Circassian girl and the tatooed man
are in a dime museum. Before the first
shock of astonishment had subsided, the
populace was admitted to the show, and
for half an hour the male and female
Philadelphians, in street costume, filed by,
shaking hands vigorously with each of
the delegates. Then at last, the Nestor
among the Pan-Americans had an ener-
getic conversation with the chieftain of
the reception committee, and insisted that
if he and his colleagues were not permitted
to come down on the floor and mix freely
with the other guests they would at once
go home. Explanations ensued, and it
was represented that the dais arrangement
was intended as an honor, and, that if the
President and his Cabinet had been re-
ceived, they would have had to pass
through the same ordeal; but the guests
stood firm and obstinately refused longer
to conform to this particular fashion of
the American democracy. The whole
affair was, except in a few trivial details,
a reduplication of the reception scene in
"Martin Chuzzlewit," and it will take
our guests a long time to recover from the
unfavorable impression produced.
Whatever other result it may have the
conference will lend a good deal of in-
fluence to the energetic carrying forward
of two enterprises, which taken together
will bring about enormous material
changes. One is the Nicaragua Canal,
work on which has actually begun, and to
the completion of which the United States
Government is now formally pledged.
Long before the end of the century this
will probably be finished, and American
coasters will then be enabled to pass
along the entire west shore of South
America, while all the commerce between
Europe and China and Japan will pass
the newly-opened gate. The other
project is a great trunk railroad from
New York through to Buenos Ayres. The
digging of the new canal will almost force
its projectors to encourage the extension
of the Mexican Central to Greytown,
so as to give a speedy route by land to
the scene of their operations; and a few
hundred miles more of rail would carry
the line to Bogota, in Columbia, the
northern terminus of the great South
American system which is not only already
projected but actually completed for more
than a third of the distance. From
Bogota to Buenos Ayres is 3,400 miles,
and 1,350 of this is now in operation,
while the remaining 2,000 willprobably
all be built within the next ten years.
Fast mails would then bring even the re-
motest points of the three Americas
within a couple of weeks of each other,
and New York would certainly become,
in edible resources, the one great
city of pleasure in the world.
Paris and London, even under the
most favorable conditions, are shut
out practically from the realms
of the turtle and tropical fruits; and
there are, as experienced travellers know,
delights of the palate known to the
denizens of Central and South America
which have yet to win the fame they de-
serve from civilised human beings.
To-morrow the Federation of Labor,
which has grown into being one of the
great forces in the body politic, holds its
convention in Boston. Four thousand seven
hundred unions will be represented, with a
membership of nearly 700,000. The presi-
dent of the convention is a modest little
Englishman named Gompers, who has in
eight years boils up the federation into a
success of the first magnitude. He has
always hitherto discouraged strikes, but
it is now rumored that the real
business of the convention will
be to decide whether the time
is ripe for the declaration of a grand
universal revolt on the 1st May next in
favor of eight hours as the fixed limit of
a day's work. It has already been shown
that a local strike in favor of eight hours,
even in the event of a temporary success,
merely sends trade away to other districts
where longer hours prevail; and anything
short of a national movement in some one
branch of connected trades would neces-
sarily end in disaster. The Knights of
Labor, with their 300,000 members, the
Farmers' Union, with 800,000, and the
railroad unions, with 750,000 more, are
all said to be ready to co-operate with the
federation in any action that may be
determined upon. This is the era of
colossal strikes, but should the plans
now forming be carried out the worid
will look on at the most gigantic contest
in industrial annals ever waged. In any
case the struggle, even if it does not begin
next spring, will be simply postponed to
a more favorable opportunity. If post-
poned, it will be mainly because the
coming year is expected to bring great
changes in the relations of employers and
employed. At present the employers are
nearly all united in "pools" or "trusts,"
each with a central management, and the
workmen, in event of a strlke, are con-
fronted with a solid unbroken phalanx of
opposition. But the courts are now
declaring such "trusts" illegal, and in
this state and in many others, all those
who engage in them are under the
penal code guilty of a misdemeanor,
punishable with a year's imprisonment
or 1,000 dollars fine, or both, in the discre-
tion of the sentencing judge. In another
year a great many of these organisations
therefore will have disappeared, and the
unions would simply have to fight a scat-
tering army of isolated employers. There
is, however, a restless uneasy spirit
abroad among most of the workmen, and
they are far more likely to rush into an
immediate contest than to wait patiently
through another long twelve months.
One of the many outrages perpetrated
by corporate capital has been alluded to
in the President's message. The freight
cars on nearly all the railroads are for
economical reasons so constructed as to
require the brakeman personally to stand
between the moving cars and couple
them together with a pin. There
are at the patent office at least
50 workable devices for auto-
matic coupling, scarcely one of which
involves an expenditure of more than
50 dollars on each car. Even the most
profitable railroads, however, have de-
clined to adopt even the cheapest of these
devices, and the result has been an average
annual list of casualties on the railroads of
2,000 killed outright, and 20,000 wounded.
The wounded find employment generally
as keepers of railroad-crossings or switch-
tenders, and on all the principal roads no
small percentage of the employés are men
who have thus been mutilated in the com-
pany's service. The President now sug-
gests that under the Inter State Commerce
law, Congress has power to require
the railroads to adopt some uniform
pattern of car with effective safety
appliances, and thus stop this con-
stant sacrifice of human life. Perhaps
the one passage in his message that no one
has found fault with is that in which he
says that it is a reproach to our civiliza-
tion that any class of American workmen
should in the pursuit of a necessary and
useful vocation be subjected to a peril of
life and limb as great as that of a soldier
in time of war.
Even with a steadily growing pension
list, the surplus still bothers us. Last
year it was 57,000,000 dollars, and it will
be at least 43,000,000 dollars for the cur-
rent year. This is independent of the
45,000,000 required by law to be put in a
sinking fund for the extinction of the
debt, and which, of course, is really just
so much more money taken from the
pockets of the people over and above ne-
cessary national expenditures. The debt is
shrinking down each year to a smaller and
smaller figure, and before the end of the
century it will have become a thing of the
past. For the present the Republicans
now propose to give us absolutely free
tobacco, and also to take off the excise
duties levied on spirits used in manu-
facturing, Even then there wiH be about
15,000,000 dollars to be thrown away in any
promising form of extravagance, such as
steamship subsidies or additions to the
navy.
Jefferson Davis has at last passed away,
having, in spite of the chagrins of defeat,
survived to the ripe age of four-score.
His death finally marks the close of the
war epoch. He was the only leader on
the losing side who did not make his
peace with the Union, and whose
civil disabilities were not removed.
But as the great chieftain of
the lost cause it was manifestly
impossible that he should ask for
the indulgence of the Government which
he had striven to overthrow. In his later
years, he has again and again expressed
his wish that the union should be per-
petual; and by inference at least sug-
gested what undoubtedly was the truth,
that he never, until forced by circum-
stances to do so, framed the purpose to
destroy it. The speeches and the robes
in the Southern legislatures, at the out-
break of the war, showed that nine-tenths
of the people of the South were ardently
in favor of the preservation of the union,
and the secession ordinances were simply
passed upon the assurance of the leaders
that the North would at once back down,
and let the country be run by the slave
power as it had been for half a century
before. These leaders, of whom Davis
was the chief, were undoubtedly sincere
in these assurances; and it was
with the sincerest surprise and the most
poignant grief that they found that the
north was really determined to fight.
Honor and a general belief that their
cause was constitutionally just then led
them to throw away the scabbard, and the
most bloody war in human history was
sternly fought out to the bitter end. Now
that it is all over the "infinite pity" of it
grows stronger and stronger in the minds
of those who looked on at its hideous
course of misery and carnage, and it is a
sign of restored national reason that from
no quarter does there come a single re-
proach against the man who has at last
gone to his rest.
Curiously enough, Mexico, which is
behind us in many things, has adopted
the new graphophone much more readily
than ourselves. The reason for this is the
singular one that the people for the most
part are unable to read and write.
Hitherto, when a Mexican has wanted to
send a message home he has had to secure
the services of the public letter-writer.
Now all he has to do Is to go to a grapho-
phone office, talk Into the tube, and send
the wax cylinder away, to be taken by its
recipient to the nearest machine and
"read back" in the very living accents of
the sender. So admirably has this system
worked that the Mexican Government has
now made a graphophone a part of the
furniture of every post-office—or at least
this will be be as soon as Mr. Edison's
factory at Orange can turn out the
machines. Not improbably the hint
suggested here will be adopted all over
the imperfectly educated parts of the
world, and even the most barbarous
savages, the very uttermost heathen, may
be glad to avail themselves of the grap-
hophone post.
The prospect of a world's fair here in
1892 grows beautifully less every day.
We have by very hard work managed to
raise the 5,000,000 dollars guarantee fund
—which is not after all very much less
than the Chicago fund—but it is now
firmly held by the architects and engi-
neers that it is utterly impossible to carry
a work of this magnitude to completion in
two short years. Besides it is hardly likely
that the world at large will want another
exposition so soon after the Paris triumph
of this year; and three years is too
short a period to allow of the
development of the necessary crop in the
way of novelties and inventions. The
only reason why the date shonld be '92
is of course a chronological one—in
memory of the fourth centenary of the
landing of Columbus on a small island
away to the east of the American main-
land. Sorely this ought to be disregarded
in the face of the far weightier considera-
tions on the other side of the account.
Chicago, however, is bound to get the ex-
position, and in '92, too, at that; and
she accepts our modest suggestion of
the above difficulties with a sniff of
contemptuous spite. "I'm a man
from Porktown, I am," says each
Chicago travelling paid advocate;
"I'm a hustler from Hustlerville,
I am; jest you vote to hev' the
fair in Chicago, and we'll give free
passes and a full 25 foot building lot and a
plot in the new cemetery besides to every
son of a gun that comes." It must be
confessed, though, that if we ever do have
a fair at any time in the present century
the chances are steadily improving for the
selection of Chicago as the site.
The grand opera has opened its first
regular season, and is giving "Don Juan"
and the "Trovatore" in German. The
houses are overcrowded even under these
depressing circumstances, while the music
of the future on the intervening
nights is very indifferently patronised.
Next to the Kendals, Wyndham is
the greatest favorite of the season,
especially in the "Candidate." Wilson
Barrett has done fairly well with
"Claudian," but his style is altogether
too robust and sonorous for us shrill-
voiced New Yorkers. At Niblo's there is
a "gorgeous" spectacle with the title of
"Kajanka," but it is at bottom merely an
imitation of the eternal "Black Crook."
Daly is preparing a grand revival of "As
You Like It," modernised, of course, so
far as stage traditions are concerned, just
as he modernised the "Midsummer
Night's Dream." The awful stilted,
affected stage voices of the past were bad
enough, but after all, nineteenth century
lisps and drawls go far worse with the
natural utterances of the great immortal.
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