suitable legislation, however, is far more difficult than to set forth the need of public supervision and control of the great common carriers; while it is further to be said that it may prove even more difficult to pass suitable measures through a hesitant Senate than to put them into the proper form. There is nothing of a radical or sensational kind that is needed, and the railroads would be benefited rather than injured if government control should have the results that President Roosevelt desires. That some form of railroad bill will be passed during the present session is generally agreed. Meanwhile, the agitation of the subject is doing a vast amount of good, for it is exposing all the evils of rebating and discrimination, and is bringing remedies into effect even in advance. of any legislation at Washington. Thus, some of the great railroad systems have decided to stop the issuing of passes to politicians and their friends. people have realized the extent of this evil.

Value of Public Agitation.

Few

The very fact that the Bureau of Corporations of the new Commerce Department is always prepared to investigate has had its salutary results in leading railroad companies and industrial corporations to abandon some of their less defensible methods. The President's reiterated demand for a "square deal" has thus taken an amazing hold upon the business life, as well as upon the political life, of the country. The thorough awaken

important than the passing of laws. Thus, even if no way should be found at present to bring great insurance companies under supervision of the national government, such companies would nevertheless be obliged by public opinion henceforth to conduct themselves with a strict regard to their duties and obligations. The continuance of the insurance investigation in New York has kept before the country the fact that the companies have been in the habit of paying large sums of money to influence legislation and control the administration of the insurance laws. And what the insurance companies have done in this direction every discerning man knows must be less than the railroad companies, the trolley lines, the gas companies, and other franchise-holding corporations have been in the habit of doing to secure their own selfish ends. With public attention fixed upon these evils, no director of a corporation can henceforth be permitted to plead ignorance as an excuse for such practices. And with the warning thus given, the public will henceforth demand severe punishment and accept no excuses.

the actual work of construction. But for the Spooner Act, which put this unprecedented discretion in the hands of the President, all this important history might not have been made. It is still true that the most effective way to construct a canal would be to leave carte blanche in the hands of the President. But Congress has now made it manifest that it will assert its usual functions and insist upon making appropriations in detail for the salary list, and upon supervising in general most of the matters that relate to the great engineering project at the Isthmus. In making an emergency appropriation last month for current canal expenditures, various members of both houses attempted with scanty success to find scandalous extravagance in such items, for example, as the payment to engineers of the kind of salaries that first-class engineering talent everywhere commands. There will be much obstruction, but there seems to be no other way in this country to get public work done except through the haggling of committees and the bombast of parliamentary orators. There will be rough weather on Panama waters at Washington this winter, but the project will go forward nevertheless.

tained a very favorable place on the calendar of that chamber. It is true that it would be desirable to have direct steamship lines between the United States and all the South American ports, and it would be gratifying if one should find on all the seas a multitude of swift and fine merchant steamers flying the American flag. . But at present American enterprise seeks more prof. itable fields; and American young men are too well paid on the land to subject themselves to the hardships of a sailor's lot. Generally speaking, we hire Europeans to do our ocean freighting for us because they will do it cheaply. Instead of our losing money by not hauling our own goods to and from foreign lands, we save a great deal by getting the business done much more cheaply than we could do it ourselves. There may gradually come about a condition under which we shall build more merchant ships along our seaboard and sail more of them under the American flag. If some small and temporary encouragement can be given to aid in the starting of certain desirable lines, particularly to South American ports,-such, for example, as aid in the form of special pay for carrying the mails, there might be some benefit derived; but any large measure of pecuniary grants to steamship lines from the public treasury would be contrary to the best judgment of the country. At present the Republicans have two-thirds of the members of the House of Representatives.

If they wish to see the party proportions reversed in the elections of next November, they will leave the present Dingley tariff unmodified and add thereto a system of subsidies for steamship lines.

Reforming

The orderly and constructive mind. the Consular that Secretary Root brought to bear Service. upon the immense problems that confronted him in the War Department is now shown by him in the new work of his portfolio as Secretary of State. He was immediately impressed with the fact that the State Department had no record to enlighten him as to the merits and services of the men who make up our widely scattered force of consular officers. Furthermore, he saw that no part of the public service was so subject to political pressure. Where civil service reform had prevented the use of other branches of the government service for the purpose of providing for men who wish to be supported by Uncle Sam the consular service has remained open. And so it has often happened that good consuls who would have kept their places under any proper system have been sum marily removed to make room for incompetent men possessing political influence. The result of Mr. Root's study of this subject is a bill, introduced early in December, which provides for a classification of consuls and consuls-general, seven grades being formed, with salaries ranging

members of the consular service are to be first appointed only to the lower grades, upon examination to be conducted by a special board of three members. The higher grades of the service are to be filled only by promotion. It is provided that five consular officers of high rank shall be assigned to inspection work, so that the Department of State may really know what is going on at the consulates throughout the world. An important feature of the bill requires that the clerks in the consular offices shall be Americans. The fee system is to be abolished. This measure embodies the results of the study given to the subject by Senators and others who have heretofore brought forward bills for the reform of the consular service. Mr. Root has explained and advocated the measure before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and it is greatly to be hoped that it may become a law. We have many excellent consuls already in the service to whom this measure will come as an act of recognition and justice, giving them both advancement and security.

colleague, Senator Hawley. Thus, in Senators Bulkeley and Brandegee Connecticut has a new representation. The unfortunate Senator Mitchell, of Oregon, died in December, and his place is taken temporarily by John Mc Dermot Gearin, a Democrat, appointed by the governor, to fill

HON. JAMES A. TAWNEY, OF MINNESOTA. (New chairman House Committee on Appropriations.)

the vacancy. One of the Delaware seats is vacant through the perennial tangle in the politics of that State. Mr. Warner appears from Missouri as a Republican to fill the seat of the venerable Cockrell. The patriarchal Stewart, of Nevada, is replaced by the Hon. George S. Nixon. Mr. LaFollette, the Senator-elect from Wisconsin, did not appear at Washington to be sworn in last month. As governor of his State, Mr. La Follette had called an extra session of the Legislature, which met on December 5 to consider the matters of legislation which belonged essentially to the governor's programme. It was expected that the session would complete its work satisfactorily and adjourn before Christmas, and the governor submitted his resignation on December 19, in order to take his place in the Senate at Washington after the holiday recess.

his critics. Although in form he was addressing his message to Congress, he was well aware of that great mechanism of the press by which the entire unabridged document would be placed in the hands of every reading citizen of the entire country. No President had ever gained such a hearing and such an influence as belonged to President Roosevelt at the assembling of the Fifty-ninth Congress, and it is fair to say that no President had ever better earned the right to set forth his views upon questions of public policy. There was not a tinge of partisanship in his presentation of the questions of the day, but there was conviction, sincerity, and strength in all his statements and arguments. Many of the things set forth in this message had been already expressed by Mr. Roosevelt in one form or another; but he desired to mass them in a coherent, well-proportioned statement, in order to exhibit to the country, as well as to Congress, his views regarding public policy, and his convictions with respect to needed legislation at the present time.

suitable legislation, however, is far more difficult than to set forth the need of public supervision and control of the great common carriers; while it is further to be said that it may prove even more difficult to pass suitable measures through a hesitant Senate than to put them into the proper form. There is nothing of a radical or sensational kind that is needed, and the railroads would be benefited rather than injured if government control should have the results that President Roosevelt desires. That some form of railroad bill will be passed during the present session is generally agreed. Meanwhile, the agitation of the subject is doing a vast amount of good, for it is exposing all the evils of rebating and discrimination, and is bringing remedies into effect even in advance. of any legislation at Washington. Thus, some of the great railroad systems have decided to stop the issuing of passes to politicians and their friends. Few people have realized the extent of this evil.

important than the passing of laws. Thus, even if no way should be found at present to bring great insurance companies under supervision of the national government, such companies would nevertheless be obliged by public opinion henceforth to conduct themselves with a strict regard to their duties and obligations. The continuance of the insurance investigation in New York has kept before the country the fact that the companies have been in the habit of paying large sums of money to influence legislation and control the administration of the insurance laws. And what the insurance companies have done in this direction every discerning man knows must be less than the railroad companies, the trolley lines, the gas companies, and other franchise-holding corporations have been in the habit of doing to secure their own selfish ends. With public attention fixed upon these evils, no director of a corporation can henceforth be permitted to plead ignorance as an excuse for such practices. And with the warning thus given, the public will henceforth demand severe punishment and accept no excuses.