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2 Public Opinion Throughout the Union | WHAT CONGRESS DID. (Ft. Worth Telegram.) Congress has adjourned for the reg ular term, and there is not a great deal that stands to its credit. Fol lowing is a brief synopsis of what was accomplished during the term: It ratified the Santo Domingo treaty. It passed a billion dollars’ worth of appropriation bills. It ordered an investigation of the lumber trust; of the international harvester trust and cotton exchanges. It passed an immigration act, coup led with the exclusion of Japanese coolies. It knocked out the canteen at sol diers’ homes. It gave the railway employes a six teen-hour law. It established an agricultural bank in the Philippines. It passed a rather tame currency reform measure. It provided for a new battleship. It passed a modified act prohibit ing parties from making campaign assessments. It ratified the Algeciras treaty. It adopted a resolution providing for an investigation of the Brownsville affair. It decided that Senator Smoot of Utah was entitled to his seat. It passed a general service pension act. It passed a rivers and harbors bill. It raised the salaries of the vice president, speaker, cabinet members, members of congress and postal em ployes. It passed and provided an appropri ation for pneumatic postal tubes in several of the larger cities. There is not much in the list of real moment to the masses of the people. THE CASE OF PERKINS. (The New York Sun.) We would, with all proper diffidence and regard, ask Mr. Perkins if he thinks that he has shown a due and creditable solicitude .for the feelings of Mr. Roosevelt? Mr. Perkins, bow ing with dignity to an aroused and re-constructed public sentiment, ac knowledges the technical immorality of the New York Life contribution to the campaign, and he, out of his own pocket, restores the full amount, with interest. Mr. Perkins was in no wise the beneflciajry except as the con sciousness of a good act, well and timely done, may have refreshed him casually. The sole, individual benefi ciary was Mr. Roosevelt, who was elected to the presidency of the Unit ed States. Mr. Perkins, therefore, is denuded of his $50,000 without profit and without recourse! The New York Life attained its laudable object; it saw Mr. Roosevelt elected. It is sat isfied and urges no audible complaint. Mr. Perkins, too, may be satisfied for aught we know to the contrary. He was gratified, doubtless, over Mr. Roosevelt’s success, but that he as sessed his emotions at the figure of $50,000 our well known scepticism makes difficult of acceptance. In fact for us, the postulate is wholly unob scured —who is going to make good to Mr. George W. Perkins his departed $50,000? Senator Bob Taylor says “the world is growing better.” He ought to think so since it made him a senator just after the salary grab was success fully worked up. IS HARRIMAN JOKING? (The Washington Herald.) That eminent humorist, Mr. Harri man, dropped in on the interstate com merce commission the other day with a broad grin on his face and communi cated to them the startling informa tion that he wanted to get in touch with the commission, to obey the laws and to be a good boy generally. We wonder if that is another of Harri man’s little jokes, a timely pleasantry offered in mitigation of sundry un pleasant revelations to which Mr. Harriman has playfully alluded as an cient history. We wonder if Mr. Rockefeller will laugh when he hears of it, and whether there will not be a hearty haw-haw from the whole re gion of high finance when they get wind of Harriman’s latest. We should like to take it seriously, but how can we, in view of the Harriman propen sity to be jocular about our most cher ished institutions? A short time ago Mr. Harriman was convinced that the country was afflicted with an attack of interstatecommercecommissionitis; has he himself succumbed to the dire malady? Is he, too, willing to go un der the yoke, or is he only joking? RELIEF MUST BE FOUND. (Los Angeles Examiner.) When William J. Bryan expressed himself as being in favor of the gov ernment ownership of railroads, the view was.indorsed by some of his fol lowers and even by others, irrespec tive of party. The reason of this sup port cannot be attributed so much to a confidence in the policy as to the readiness of the people to grasp at any remedy for the prevailing ineffi ciency of our railroads. Whether Mr. Bryan’s plan is expe dient or whether the taking over of the railroads by the government would simply open up another avenue for political plundering and legislative corruption is problematical. It is cer tain, however, that a change is neces sary and imminent. The conditions which exist today are appalling—the railroad facilities of the country, par ticularly those between Chicago and the Atlantic seaboard, are terribly in adequate. Because of congestion, shipments invariably suffer delay and our commercial activities which are dependent upon transportation facili ties can see no progress until relief is found. THE PEOPLE’S POWER. (The Washington Herald.) When it is remembered that of the original states only Massachusetts and New Hampshire submitted their con stitutions to the pepole for ratification, while the custom of amending consti tutions by popular vote is now es tablished in every state except Dela ware, we can plainly see the great advance which has been made in the direction of giving the people more and more power. We believe, too, that this advance is only the beginning of a movement toward a higher de velopment of popular supremacy. The people are coming into their own. The federalism of today is a democratic federalism. Where it will lead is a question which only the future can answer; but the fact that the people are exercising a larger degree of power today than ever before is a fact which cannot escape any student of our po litical institutions. "The weekly Jeffersonian. DAY OF RECKONING FOR THE SUGAR TRUST. (The New York American.) The United States government is to move for the dissolution of the Sugar Trust. This is the direct result of the cases brought on evidence furnished by Wil liam Randolph Hearst and of the Su gar Trust’s part in wrecking the Real Estate Trust Company of Philadelphia. Under the proceedings instituted on information supplied by Mr. Hearst, the American Sugar Refining Company —the Sugar Trust —was convicted of accepting rebates from the New York Central Railroad Company. Both the trust and the railroad were fined, as criminals, the Central suffering to the amount of SIOB,OOO and the sugar trust getting off with a paltry SIB,OOO. The amount of the fines, however, was not so important as the fact that these corporations had been convict ed of systematic law breaking. Mr. Hearst not only furnished evi dence showing that the New York Central had been guilty of giving re bates to the trust, but that other trunk lines had followed the same practice, and this evidence has been utilized as fast as the department of justice has been able to reach the specific cases. In addition to its crimes of exacting and accepting rebates, the sugar trust is also implicated in the looting of the Real Estate Trust Company of Phila delphia and the suicide of its presi dent, Frank K. Hippie. The part taken by the sugar trust in that affair was characteristic. Adolph Segal had bor rowed two million dollars from Hippie for the erection of a great sugar re finery at Philadelphia. Needing more money, Segal came to New York and got $1,250,000 from a man named Kis sel, who was really a dummy of the trust. As the price of advancing the money Kissel had himself and two friends elected as a majority of the directors. Then they got the $1,250,000 back and voted not to operate the Phil adelphia refinery. In this way they killed a competitor of the trust. Be cause of this trick of high finance the Pennsylvania Sugar Refining Company has just sued the American Sugar Refining Company for $30,000,000. As was shown by the evidence in the Hearst cases, the great club used by the sugar trust to kill its competitors was the railroad rebate, the same as that employed by the beef trust, the Standard Oil and kindred monopolies. Then, having used a public utility to crush competition, it proceeded to loot the public through high prices in the customary trust fashion. n EVERY LITTLE HELPS. (The Providence Journal.) Mr. Roosevelt is a far-seeing states man, and he has convinced himself that the voters of America desire the curbing of the trusts and the elimina tion of graft and discrimination from the management of those corporations that have an important connection with the public welfare. When on Monday he signed the bill to limit the working hours of railway employ es, he said to one of the labor rep resentatives, who stood near by: “You know the president only gets a per centage of what he wants,” but his own percentage has been considerably In excess of that of some former pres idents. RAILWAY RETALIATION. (The Chattanooga Times.) It will be interesting to watch the effect of the recent orders of the rail roads operating in Nebraska as the result of the 2-cent a mile passenger rate recently arbitrarily established by the legislature of that state. Here after there is to be no special clergy men rates; no excursion rates; no reduced fares for disabled soldiers or volunteers or special rates for charit- ’ able institutions. Everybody will have to pay the full 2-cent fare at all times and for all occasions. While the railroads may feel that they have been forced into this atti tude of aggressive retaliation, it is doubtful if it shall prove to be the best policy for them. The present attitude of the public toward railroads and carrying corporations is not reassuring and will not probably be Improved any by the resort of the companies to that sort of procedure no matter how very exasperating and inviting the provocation. n SENATOR BAILEY. (New York Tribune.) Said Senator Bailey in his recent remarkable outburst before the Texas legislature: “I have letters from other states sayihg that if Texas was tired of me I could come among them and they would send me to the senate.” It is too bad that Mr. Bailey did not name the states. Probably he left them nameless so as not to offend the susceptibilities of Democratic col leagues in the senate now holding on ad interim. Texas ought to feel the implied rebuke and strain her self to do proper honor to a statesman so widely honored in sister common wealths. JOLTS FOR STANDPATTERS. (New York Times.) France joins Germany in pressure upon the United States for loosening of the bands which restrict commerce between the two nations, and in the background are the rest of the round baker’s dozen of nations whose reci procity treaties lie buried in the sen ate files. This is a rude jolt to the pol icy of postponing tariff reform until the trusts have been smashed, the railways reformed and sundry odd do mestic jobs cleaned up. WHAT BRYAN SHOULD DO. (Chattanooga Times.) Everybody has a high opinion of Mr. Bryan’s honesty and sincerity and now if he would only address himself se riously and with a purpose to bring all elements of the party together by tak ing a conservative stand on the things that demand conservatism and be rad ical only where radicalism is demand ed, he would greatly hearten his party and increase its prospects of success. CARMACK'S GOOD JOB. (The New York World.) Many years ago Thomas H. Carter, of Montana, talked a river and harbor bill to death in a dying congress. Re cently Senator Carmack talked the subsidy bill to death. It was a good service. Mr. Carmack’s senatorial ca reer ended with the congress that expired recently, but he finished In style. A good' man who died with his boots on. Mr. Carmack deserves a glorious political resurrection.