December 10, 1887





The   Record  and  Guide.





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Vol. XL.





DECEMBER 10. 1887.





No. 1,030





It is clear that President Cleveland's message was designed for a
campaign document. He evidently intends to pursue au aggres¬
sive campaign, and proposes to unite his adherents on the one ques¬
tion of revenue and reform. There will not be much said in the
canvass about the civil service, nor any other topic thac will dis¬
tract the attention of the public from the issue he has raised. His
dismissal of Commissioner Sparks means that he does not intend
to antagonize the land grant railroad corporations, while his inter-
fer'snce on behalf of Colonel Fellows shows that he proposes to
keep in harmony hereafter with the regular Democratic machines.
He will probably loje some of the Mugwump vote, but he
evidently thinks that he will gain adherents among our farming
population, especially in the Northwest,





The President may not succeed in inducing Congress to agree
upon the reduction of the tariff, but all he cares for apparently is
to make an issue upon which to go to the country. It does not
appear that he is at all anxious to get lid of the surplus in the
Treasury, for if a business depression results from the abstraction
of funds from general trade he will charge the disturbance to the
opponents of his scheme of tariff reduction. Is it not possible also
that the great railroad organizations may favor putting coal on the
free list? The operating expenses of tbe railroad lines has been
largely increased by the unnatural price for coal. Were we to
throw our markets open for lumber and coal, Canada could supply
the one and New Brunswick and Great Britain the other, in quan¬
tities large enough to give us cheaper fuel. Whatever the final
resu t, we are in for an exciting debate on the tariff.





Secretary Fairchild follows his predecessors in trying to put a
stop to the coinage of the silver dollar. For doing this he has been
applauded by the Tribune and other Eastern Republican papers;
yet who can honestly say that the past silver policy of the govern¬
ment has not been a splendid success? What would we have done
without the 280,000,000 coined silver dollars ? In the form of one,
two and five-dollar certificates they have, the Secretary admits,
been of inestimable value to the retail trade of the country. He
says we need more of them; but he wants the silver to be put in
bars instead of dollars. He admits also that he is piling up gold
bullion in the Treasury instead of coining it for use in general
business. He seems lo labor under a curious hallucination that
ther© is danger of too much metallic currency; yet, as a writer in
the Mining Record points out, if we keep on our silver coinage
until the close of December, 1890, we will only have $5.65 per
capita. Yet France, as we have often stated, has over |14 per
capita. The French people, in addition, have $32.50 in gold per
head, and legal tender bank notes of $14.50 per head. That is to
say, France has an aggregate of legal tender money of $51.47J^ per
head, of which no less than 37>^ is metallic. The total metallic and
paper circulation of this country amounts to but about 23.20 per
head, or less than half that of France. Yet France is more
densely populated than the United States and its exchanges more
easily made. Our people are more scattered and, with normal
conditions, should have more rather than less currency. Yet
Secretary Fairchild deliberately proposes, in face of our swiflly
increasing population, to cut off our supplies of currency. He
asks to be allowed discretion to stop the coinage of silver. He has
shown what his discretion is in the matter of gold, for he han
exercised his power by putting a stop to the gold coinage so far as
he can. Surely the time ought to come when our national
finances should be managed in the interests of the business of the
country, and not solely to add to the value of the money controlled
by tbe banking and money-lending classes.





An engineer replaced a lawyer as President of the French Repub¬
lic. The grandfather of Sadi Carnot was the famous *' organizer of
victory " during the French Revolution. In the choice of a new
President it would seem as if the French Deputies and Senators
were anticipating possible war ; in which case an engineer would
be a fitter head of the State than a lawyer. Mr. Chauncey M.
Depew thinks it is a blemish in the French Constitution that the
Ugitlative body can practically force the Executive to resign if he





is out of relation with the two Chambers, The President of the
Central road thinks our system is better, where the Executive
department is independent of the legislative and the one can
nullify the action of the other. But is this good reasoning?
Would Mr. Depew care to be the head of the Central road if the
Board of Directors were generally at variance with him ? To be
efficient the various officers should work together. This harmony
of action is provided for in all the parliamentary governments of
Europe. The real Executive—that is, the Cabinet—resigns when it
cannot command a majority in the legislative chambers. When
the Southern Confederacy was organized it was provided that the
Cabinet members should sit in its Congress and should remain in
authority only so long as they could command a majority of the
members of both Houses.





In point of fact, it is our own Constitution that ie defective, not
that of France. The retirement of Marshal McMahon, Thiers and
Grevy, in obedience of a demand of the legislative body and of the
nation, prevented a possible revolution. In this case the govern¬
mental machine worked smoothly. If ever a Constitutional Con¬
vention is brought into existence to amend our organic law, on©
of the first reforms it wiil recommend will be to bring our Execu¬
tive into closer relations with Congress. It is quite absurd for the
head of the nation and his Cabinet to have one policy and Congress
quite a different one. This produces needless friction, much use¬
less debate, prolongations of the sessions of Congress, and very
often failure of needful legislation. How much belter it would be
even now if both the Senate and House could be depended on for
majorities to support President Cleveland's policy. We may as
well acknowledge it firet as last, that our Constitution is an exceed¬
ingly defective one. It should be vitally altered and recon¬
structed to bring it into harmony with an age of steam and elec¬
tricity. It is eo difficult to amend it by the machinery provided
by law that there is danger of serious complications later on in
our history._____________

It will be noticed, however, that the French bave either uncon¬
sciously imitated or have deliberately taken a lesson from our
practice in choosing Presidents. We never select our foremost
statesmen to be occupants of the White House. It is always som©
second or third-rate lawyer. The only exceptions are in the case of
generals, and of these w© pick out the best and strongest. Mr.
Sadi Carnot was not much better known in France than Grover
Cleveland was in the United States, yet all the foremost statesmen
in France were passed by and a third-rate public servant chosen to
be Chief Executive. This is what we always do. The members of
our Cabinets generally embrace the names of some of our foremost
statesmen, and so it is in France, but the French Cabinet Ministers
have the advantage of initiating and carrying out lines of public
policy. All that our Secretaries can do is to make recommenda¬
tions to Congress, which in nine cases out of ten are disregarded.





The report of th© Interstate Commerce Commission is not a very
able or suggestive document. The law has worked well, but it
needs amendment both in the interests of th© railroads and the
community. The danger is that the great corporations will secure
such a legislation as will help them, while the representatives of
the people will overlook the interests of their clients. Among the
amendments to the law should be a provision ordering full and
accurate reports of the earnings, expenses and projected improve¬
ments of all the transportation lines. It is strange how apathetic
our security holders have been respecting this matter ; they have
allowed boards of directors to keep all the details of the business of
the companies to themselves, which were used, of course, for their
personal advantage in the stock market. Every bond and stock,
holder has the sam© right as have the directors to know every fact
connected with the finances of the corporation in which his money
is invested.





Congressman Townshend proposes a new Cabinet office, to be
called a Department of Industries and Public Works. To this he
would transfer a number of bureaus—the agricultural,
weather, labor, patents, improvements of rivers and harbors,
commerce, and several others less known. This should
be done. As the interests and industries of the country
grows there should be bureaus to represent them in the
chief councils of the nation. In the evolution of all countries
the central government necessarily takes on the headships of
new departments. Compare, for instance, the advisers of a
Tudor king with the Cabinet of Queen Victoria. The latter in its
departments and bureaus represents all the great interests of the
State—industrial, financial, and political. Our fossil politicians
and editors, of course, object to this kind of centralization, but in
doing so they show their blindness to the obvious tendencies of

the ag© and of all history.

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We ought, indeed, to largely increase the number of our Cabinet
Secretaries.   Transportation, agriculture, labor, education, com-