Congress Takes Offense. Mr. Roosevelt, in presenting the subject in this year's message, states very clearly that such a restriction could operate only in the interest of those perpetrating crime against the Government. In this connection, he declares, "The chief argument in favor of the provision was that the Congressmen did not themselves wish to be investigated by Secret Service men." The President goes on to say that these detectives had been used constantly in prosecuting and convicting criminals in the executive branch of the Government, and adds, "In my belief we should be given ample means to prosecute them, if found, in the legislative branch." In conclusion, he says: "But if this is not considered desirable, a special exception could be made in the law, prohibiting the use of the Secret Service force in investigating members of Congress. It would be far better to do this than to do what actually was done, and strive to prevent, or at least to hamper, effective action against criminals by the executive branch of the Government." Congress chose to take great umbrage at this passage in the message. Certain members made the discovery that a co-ordinate branch of the Government had been insulted by the Chief Magistrate. Whereupon they all took the view that they had been insulted, and worked themselves up into a state of furious rage, reading into the President's remarks what the ordinary person would never have found. The Folly of Men in Crowds. It has been observed from the days of the most ancient philosophers that men who have much capacity for calmness and good sense when acting alone upon their own responsibility can exhibit the most incredible folly when acting with others in a large body, whether organized or unorganized. The performartces of Congress, by reason of the President's plain and obviously valuable comment upon the Secret Service, provide us with a very excellent illustration of this well-known rule that men who are sensible by themselves can be guilty of extreme folly in a crowd. There is not a word in the President's message which either declares or intimates that Congressmen are criminals, and that they are trying to escape exposure by prohibiting the president from using Secret Service men to investigate their behavior. What the President declares is that Secret Service men ought to be under direction of the President so that they could be detailed to help the Executive in doing what under his oath of office is his principal duty,—namely, to enforce the laws of the United States. Experience has shown that the President cannot enforce the laws with entire efficiency unless, as in case of land frauds, Secret Service men or other trained agents can be used to ferret out the criminals and, to obtain evidence. If the evidence should lead to the exposure of men employed in the executive departments, as it frequently has in the past, it is even more important that false and faithless public servants should be exposed than that private individuals should be convicted. Nor does it seem sensible that when the evidence of crime is traceable to a member of the legislative branch of Government the inquiry should thereupon cease. Nevertheless, parliamentary bodies have always been jealous of their positions, because, historically, they were obliged to assert their rights as against the absolutism of sovereigns. As we understand the President's message, he means to say that the chief magistrate who is sworn to enforce the law ought not to be estopped from the detection of criminals wherever such criminals may be found. But if Congress prefers to make its own inquiries in its own way, and does not wish Secret Service men employed to obtain evidence that would seem to implicate members of Congress, the line might be drawn at that point without hampering the President in the work of enforcing the law as respects the executive departments. How to No President in the history of Punish the the country has been on terms of President. friendly acquaintance and intercourse with as many Representatives and Senators as President Roosevelt, with the possible exception of President McKinley. Mr. Roosevelt could have had no reason for making disparaging reflections upon Congress as a body, and still less upon Congressmen as individuals. The hysteria which swept both houses by reason of this harmless passage in the President's message is to be accounted for on principles now well understood by those who have made some study of the psychology of mobs and crowds. The solemn attempts of the two chambers to find ways of expressing their resentment against Mr. Roosevelt are too absurd to be worth chronicling in pages which, like these, must be condensed. Congressmen are only children of larger growth, and their performances sometimes do not differ in principle from those of crowds of schoolboys who fancy they have a grievance against the headmaster. The proper thing, as a vent to the wounded susceptibilities of the Sixtieth Congress, would have been for each member to have brought his own particular copy of the President's message, with its ten pictures of denuded hillsides in North China, and heaped the 500 copies in a pile on the plaza east of the Capitol, there to be burned at high noon, with the help of a barrel or two of kerosene, which could easily have been obtained by several members of Congress from the obliging friends with whom they correspond. The precedents for burning undesirable documents in public squares are numerous and respectable. Any body of intelligent schoolboys, furthermore, could readily have shown the somewhat puzzled but very angry leaders of Congress that burning Mr. Roosevelt in effigy on top of the pile of blue-bound messages would have evened the thing up and justified the resumption of real business. More Evidence. and is now more than a third finished. Both party platforms endorsed the canal work and favored its rapid completion. The Democrats as a party had no charges to bring against the Republicans for extravagance or corruption in the prosecution of this great public work. The country, indeed, was congratulating itself upon the honesty and efficiency with which the work had gone forward thus far, and was prepared to believe that under Mr. Taft or under Mr. Bryan the same policy would be continued, with general approbation. It was, therefore, a matter of surprise that one or two newspapers, notably the Indianapolis News, should have made campaign references to the Panama purchase with intimations of great scandal purposely suppressed by the President and Mr. Taft. On December 14 President Brownsville Roosevelt transmitted to the Senate a mass of new testimony relating to the occurrence at Brownsville, Texas, in August, 1906. The new testimony supports the previous conclusions, to the effect that the shooting of private citizens was done by members of the companies that were disbanded by order of the Government. The whole tendency, moreover, of the evidence as it accumulates indicates that many, if not most, of the discharged soldiers had some knowledge of the circumstances, though only a few were actually involved in the shooting affray. So much effort has been made to make it appear that the discharged soldiers were wronged, and that the Government acted upon insufficient evidence, that some confusion has remained in the public mind; so that it is well to know that the War Department and the President made no mistake. Belated Panama Libels. Some Absurd It was charged that the United States bought from American Charges. citizens for $40,000,000 what had cost those citizens only $12,000,000 in France. The President's brother-in-law was charged with having been involved in the scandal, and also Mr. Taft's brother. The matter was presented in a letter by the Hon. William D. Foulke, of Indiana, to President Roosevelt on November 25. The President replied, on December 1, in a letter of great vigor, denouncing the newspapers which had made the false charges. The Indianapolis News subsequently fell back upon the New York World as the source of its information. On December 15 Mr. Roosevelt sent a special message to Congress reviewing the facts as to the purchase of the canal and transmitting certain documents. The charges as set forth in the Indianapolis News were in most respects absurd in their display of ignorance. The attempt to connect Mr. Charles P. Taft and Mr. Douglas Robinson with the Panama transaction seems like a campaign invention for the sake of reflecting upon the President and the Republican candidate. The charges asserted that Mr. Taft was Secretary of War and active in the Panama purchase at a time when everybody. knows that Mr. Taft was in the Philippines, while Mr. Root was Secretary of War, and Mr. Knox, as Attorney-General, carried out the purchase. Everybody knows, also, that the price paid the French receivers for the assets of the failed companies was fixed by the board of engineers named by the American Government to report upon the relative merits of Nicaragua and Panama routes. On the following day the President sent a special message to Congress dealing with certain charges made during the recent campaign relating to the purchase by our Government of the assets of the French companies which held the Panama Canal franchise. We are now well advanced in the construction of the canal. The work is going forward with great energy under the direction of the War Department and the Government's engineers, The Our board had reported that the and potatoes, were, except the last, which Well-known Panama rights and unfinished suffered from unfavorable weather, well up Facts. work were worth about $40,000,- to the records in point of quantity, and all ooo to us, and finally reversed its earlier de- made new records in value. Dairy products cision in favor of Nicaragua by declaring brought the farmer nearly $800,000,000, that, upon engineering and commercial poultry and eggs even more than the cotton, grounds, it would favor the Panama route, and animal products, as a whole, nearly $3,provided a payment of $40,000,000 by our 000,000,000,. The farmer in 1908 proGovernment would give us possession of the duced new wealth four times as great as all franchise and other assets. Those interested the minerals taken from the ground, includin France were promptly informed, a meeting ing oil and the precious metals. was held, and authorization was given to sell the French property to the United States for $40,000,000. Our Congress in turn authorized the purchase on those terms, Attorney-General Knox verified all questions arising as to title, and the money was transmitted through J. P. Morgan & Co. acting as fiscal agents. There was no detail of the transaction about which there was any mystery at the time. Every phase was thoroughly discussed by Congress and understood by the press. It is almost incredible that any important newspaper should have forgotten the facts. Farm Wealth While the year 1908 brought to the railroads, manufactories, and general trade such depression as was inevitable after the financial crisis of the preceding autumn, the twelve months following the panic were for the farmers of the United States the most prosperous in the history of the country. Secretary Wilson's report of the Department of Agriculture gives the final figures of the size and value of the year's crops, and amazing figures they are. The total value of farm products reaches $7,778,000,000, a gain of 4 per cent. over the value of these products for the year 1907, and a gain of 65 per cent. over the year 1899. In this decade the farms have produced new wealth amounting to the staggering figure of $60,000,000,000. Corn is still king in its contribution to the farmer's pocket; the value of the 2,643,000,000 bushels raised in 1908 was $1,615,000,000, or more than one-fifth of the value of the total products of agriculture. This year cotton has wrested second place, in rank of value, from the hay crop, which has always, until 1908, been next to corn. And yet the hay crop is the greatest ever produced,-68,000,000 tons, worth to the farmers $621,000,000. Close after hay comes wheat, the 660,000,000 bushels raised in 1908 having a value of $620,000,000, which is more than 10 per cent. in excess of any previous wheat crop's value. Minor crops, barley, rye, beet-sugar, The Movement No doubt this great showing of the fundamental industry of agriculture makes firm ground for the feeling of hope and buoyancy now discernible in business and industry. To be sure, one cannot find anywhere as yet such whole-hearted recovery in trade as seems to have been promised by the index finger of the stock market. The standard railroad stocks have advanced nearly 40 per cent. above their low levels of last June, and are within about twenty-one points of the high records of the boom times of 1906. The basic industry of steel shows a very modest recovery from its low stage of activity last summer, and while the Pennsylvania Railroad has given a large order,-160,000 tons of steel rails, and considerable orders are talked of from the Rock Island system and others, the railroads as a whole are very slow in advertising their needs. It is thought that the hope of tariff changes in the steel schedules, of sufficient size to make for lower prices, is suggesting a waiting policy to purchasers of steel products. In other lines of manufacture, notably in textiles, there is a real quickening, and in building operations. the autumn has seen notable activity. November was the first month of 1908 to show fewer failures than came in the same month of 1907, and bank clearings were the largest of any month since the panic. The railroads will apparently report for November a loss of less than 2 per cent. from November of 1907, much the smallest loss shown in any other month of the year. areas of our country which are yet practically lion people, is not only the metropolis of the new the two things necessary, he said, were State of Washington; she sits at the gateway the locomotive and the plow, and if the head- to Alaska, and takes toll from those who way of the locomotive were stopped by the come and go. Years ago Seattle saw the adbumping-post of unnecessary restrictions the vantage of fostering the Alaskan trade, and plow would not appear. In Mr. Harriman's she has profited by that foresight. Industrial letter to the mining congress at Pittsburg he and commercial Alaska is to-day, to all inargued against the policy of limiting railway tents and purposes, annexed to Seattle. The dividends to a 4 per cent. basis. He denied Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, to be that the railroads were owned by a few rich opened at Seattle in June next, is likely to men, and that the 300,000 stockholders in astonish those Easterners who chance to see the transportation business should receive it. This fair will represent an investment of only the savings-bank rate of income, when $10,000,000. Apart from extensive Govthe farmers earned 9 per cent., manufactur- ernment exhibits, provided for by Congress, ers 19.4 per cent., and national-bank stock- Uncle Sam will have no financial interest in holders 10 per cent. Mr. James J. Hill, too, the enterprise; not a dollar of a Government painted a sad picture of railroad stockholding loan has been solicited by the management. as compared with other investments. He Several of the buildings are already comsaid that three copper cents in moving a ton pleted, and others are nearly ready for of freight ten miles pays the dividends of occupancy. This fair will be a revelathe Great Northern Railroad,- -a task that tion of Alaska's recent progress and eswould be a fair day's toil for a farmer's pecially of the genius of Northwestern wagon loaded to its capacity. "You have America. all the highways you had before we came, but we give you a better one and a cheaper one." Mr. Harriman's contention that the railroads are not owned by a few rich men seems to be becoming more true every year; the Journal of Commerce finds that in the past twelve months the number of stockholders in twenty-five leading railroads has increased from 211,069 to 252,083, while the average stockholding has decreased from about 137 shares to 119. Alaskan Within a decade the industrial Progress and interests of our far Northwest Prosperity. have developed so amazingly that all former standards of comparison have to be revised. Take, for example, the matter of Alaska's gold product. The receipts of the Seattle assay office for the ten months ending with October last amounted to $17,202.704, or about one-fifth of the total production of the United States for an equivalent period. Ten years ago the Alaskan gold output for an entire year was less than $5,000,000. The total for the past year would have been much greater but for a shortage in water supply throughout the mining districts of Alaska. The fact that so great an increment to the world's stock of the yellow metal should reach civilization through one of the younger of our prosperous coast cities reminds us that new channels are being formed to meet the needs of trade and finance upon our Northwestern border. Seattle, with her quarter of a mil Civic The people who are making serious attempts to better industrial and social conditions in this country have much cause for encouragement at the opening of the new year. Never before has there been such effective and intelligent co-operation for civic progress. If any proof of this were needed the organization and completion of the so-called "Pittsburg Survey," described by Mr. Kellogg on page 77 of this number, would of itself afford a demonstration. Another striking instance of up to date methods applied in the propaganda of social betterment is the tuberculosis exhibition in New York City. The fact that these methods are so generally successful in stimulating popular interest shows that the reform spirit is in the air, that it needs only intelligent guidance. Moreover, the people's conscience is sensitive. Ethical considerations receive more attention than formerly. It is noteworthy that in connection with the meeting of the Federation of Protestant Churches at Philadelphia last month, the country seemed interested very little, if at all, in the perpetuation of the various denominations represented, but was distinctly impressed by the federation's deliverances on industrial questions. The resolutions adopted indicated that the American Protestant churches have at last realized that they must take some stand on these questions if they are to retain their hold on the progressive elements in our citizenship. Some Personal Notes. HON: PHILANDER C. KNOX, WHO WILL BE MR. TAFT'S SECRETARY OF STATE. The building and rebuilding of cabinets for Mr. Taft goes forward blithesomely in all the newspapers. Mr. Knox, formerly AttorneyGeneral, now Senator from Pennsylvania, will lead the cabinet as Secretary of State, and Mr. Taft will find in him a strong counselor and a broad-minded statesman. It is understood beyond a doubt that Mr. Frank H. Hitchcock is to be Postmaster-General. He has served as First Assistant PostmasterGeneral, and is especially gifted in those talents for systematic administration that the Postoffice Department requires. In Presi |