| Show CLAIMS IN CONGRESS Some of the OldTimers who Will Probably Prob-ably Got a Hearing This Session i J Cinimiints Who Have Not Abandoned All Hope lu Spite ol Twenty Tears or More Delay 1 Washington Nov 24 During the special session of Congress very little legislative work was done but the committee of Congress were not idle When the regular session begins on the 4th ol December the Senate and House will find any quantity of small work already mapped out The greater great-er part of ths work is in the direction of special egislation legislation for private relief Private relief bills have burdened the calendars of Congress to I ths exclusion of much public business T for many years They have become I f such a nuisance that public men have I discussed frequently the possibility of creating a court which would have II jurlfcdiction of claims for private relief re-lief and excluding them from Congressional Congres-sional consideration When you stop to consider the fact that Congre has to make pettjr laws for the government z govern-ment of the District of Columbia and to pass on the claim of the Widow Brady for damage done to her potato pota-to patch during the war you will understand un-derstand better why it is that Congress Con-gress can sit for eight or ten months without completing much public business bus-iness Most of the claims before Congress are of ancient date A great number date back to the war There is one claim which was reported to the Senate Sen-ate recently which was really inaugurated inaug-urated In 1857 but which was not presented pre-sented to Congress until 1S73 but the claimant has not ceased to press his business on Congress for twenty years His bill has been reported to the Senate many times and is now on the calendar If it does not get a speedy hearing he may as well abandon aban-don his hopes of getting justice at the p hands of the Fiftythird Congress In the early days of a long session when there is delay over the most important import-ant public questions because committees commit-tees have not had time to consider and report on them many private relief bills are taken up and passed As the business of the session progresses the days for the consideration of private pri-vate bills are farther and farther apart Every little while an afternoon is set apart for the consideration of bills on the calendar But the chances of an individual bill are very small And in the short session it is almost impossible to get a prhate bill up for passag because the calendars are crowded with important public measures meas-ures Final v a steering committee takes hold oi the business in the Senate Sen-ate and another steering committee the business of the House and then only the most important measures are considered and each of these in its turn There is a modest expostmaster out in California who has been waiting since 1876 to obtain relief at the hands of Congress and who comes forward with a petition which has received again the approval of the committee on claims of the Senate who says in the course of his appealS appeal-S Your petitioner has heretofore applied ap-plied for relief but owing to the great amount of business to be transacted by your respective bodies his small and humble petition has been crowded aside so that other and more pressing matters of Congress might be considered consid-ered It would be interesting to hear the private opiuion which this petitioner has of the Congress which has kept him waiting for nearly eighteen years for 855 and this in the face of favorable fav-orable reports f1 m the committees of both houses ana the certainty that if the bill could have a fair consideration consider-ation it would pass The Californian is named J M Billings and his home is in Santa Clara from 1871 to 18S7 I r He is now nearly 70 years old and he says that he needs this relief to help I support him His claim is for plunder taken by some unknown burglars in the form of stamps money order funds etc Accompanying the petition are affidavits which would be funny if they did not concern so serious a matter mat-ter One is the affidavit of the assistant assist-ant in the postoffice who deposes that she saw the hole that the robbers I made in the roof to gain an entrance I Another deposition says that at the time of the robbery the town of Santa I Clara was infested with a band of 1 desperate robbers who made frequent burglaries in the towng Another says i that the postoffice rrbery was Hin fact the largest roTl Pry ever committed i com-mitted in our town Another affidavit affida-vit which lacks the element of humor altogether says that Billings was crippled financially by having to makeup make-up this loss to the government and that he has never recovered from it Congress has appropriated many thousands thous-ands of dollars in large sums for the relief of postmasters elsewhere but the old postmaster of Santa Clara has waited seventeen years for his money and he is still waiting There is a certain pathos in the case of William H Ward who wants to 1 have the court of claims pass on his I claim against the government but who has been denied any consideration at the hands of Congress for 20 years In the meantime the government has used his invention freely and is still using it Ward got out patents in November 1S57 for a bullet making machine and in December of the same year a patent pa-tent for a machine for molding shells These machines were the results of sixteen years of costly experiment The bulietmaking machine cost the inventor 49700 and the shellmolding machine 20712 as Ward was able to prove to a committee of Congress The patent isued to him were the first of the classthey were of the kind known as foundation patents which represent repre-sent more labor than the average patent pa-tent and usually a greater expenditure of mon < y The machines were of value only to governments The United States government saw their value immediately and as all Congressional committees report took possession of hem without consulting Ward and used them During the war of the re < bellion the chief of ordnance gave or It ders for the construction of bulletma s chines without regard to patents and I the machine used infringed the founda f tion patents of Ward But all the sat isfaction that Ward got from the chief of ordnance was the advice that he apply to Congress for relief It is in teresting to note that Wards appeal c was first made to Captain afterwards r Admiral Dahlgren and that this Is t the same Admiral Dahlgren who made t a claim against the government for the use of an invention of his in the navy department during the war and i whose widow recovered 5250000 in the court of claims to t which her claim was referred to Congress The Admiral inventor in-ventor and the citizen inventor have avery a-very different standing in the eyes of Congress i Ward tried to get some redress in f the courts Failing there he applied i to Congress fc relief and the House of Representatives more than once passed the bill making an appropria tion to reimburse him These bills the Senate would not pass but the Senate committee after some years agreed to report a bill referring the claim to the court of claims for adjudication Worn out with waiting Ward agreed to this So a bill was reported to the Senate It failed of consideration Then another bill was reported to another an-other Cngress but it too failed to get a bearIng or a vote So year after year the claim has been renewed Ward who lived in Auburn > N Y at the time his Invention was patented and who afterward lived in PIttsburg has ome to Alexandria which is only a suburb of Washington now and there he watches and waits for Congress cI4 Con-gress = to afford him some relief There is pathos in the statement of the COIn t 3 J A H I mittee of the House of the last Congress Con-gress gressYour committee find that Mr Ward has prosecuted his claim with the utmost ut-most diligence that he has presented it and pressed it upon the attention of every Congress for twenty years and favorable action has been had by the committees of the House and Senate for the last nine Congresses And here comes George IcAlpin who has been waiting a quarter of a century and more for Uncle Sam to return about 57000 which was taken from him illegally by the officers of the custom house at Baltimore MeAl pin was a sutler from 1S62 to 1S65 He purchased most of his supplies in Baltimore Bal-timore and shipped them to points in Virginia The total value of his shipments ship-ments was 235057 Under a special act of Congress sutlers stores were exempted from the payment of the annual 5 per cent fee exacted during the war McAlpin took out his sut lers permit complied with the law and the regulations of the treasury department but the custom house officers at Baltimore insisted on the payment of the 5 per cent in some cases and 3 per cent in others The total amount of the fees collected was 6906 McAlpin paid under protest expecting to get the money back It was covered into the treasury and the treasury department people told him that the only way that it could betaken be-taken out again was by special authority author-ity of Congress iTcAlptn came to Congress laid his case before Its committees com-mittees and obtained favorable reports re-ports He was not asking any money for damages or even compensation for services lie was simply asking Congress to return money which had been taken from him unlawfully His claim still hangs fire Possibly he will get his money back next year or the year afteror n 1802 A claim which has come down as an inheritance from husband to wife and I which is now on the Senate calendar is the claim oC Margaret Kennedy widow of Jchn Kennedy deceased John Kennedy was a loyal citizen of the District of Columbia who owned 26W acres of land on the eastern branch of the Potomac at the breaking out of the war The government took posse pos-se ion of this land and erected FortS Fort-S gwick upon it Around the fort rifle pits and other excavations were made covering nearly half the ground By this act Mr Kennedy suffered damage dam-age in about 5000 for fruit trees destroyed de-stroyed 4500 for forest trees and 1000 for fencing to say nothing of the loss of flowers and shrubs Mr Ken nedys fence was used for fuel by the soldiers A Congressional committee has valued the material taken from AIr Kennedys property not the result of military necessity at 3000 and as Mr Kennedy had received from the government before his death 137S there is still due his widow 1622 But Mr Kennedy died without getting any satisfaction from Congress and now more than thirty years after the day when the government appropriated Mr Kennedys property his widow is still petitioning Congress to pay her not for the land or for the damage done to it but for the fuel and the timber taken from it The most celebrated of the old time claims is the McGarrahan claim which bobs up at the beginning of every Congress and which is now on the calendar of the Senate Billy McGarrahan has been a familiar figure about the Capitol for twentyfive years always rather shabby looking but always smiling and hopeful McGar rahans claim went through the last Congress but was vetoed by President Harrison McGarrahan bought a tract of land in California from a man named Gomez who held a title from Mexico The New Idea Mining company com-pany discovered a quicksilver mine on it and squatted on it The company I has taken out it is said 160000000 worth of quicksilver from the mine and its stockholders are rich while McGarrahan is poor McGarrahan fought the mining company for ten years in the courts and he has had the matter befpre Congress for twenty five years The bill which passed the I Senate and House was vetoed for I technical reasons and a corrected bill I was immediately introduced and passed the Senate but it never ained consideration from the House Senator Sena-tor Teller has charge of McGarrahans interests and it looks as though he might finally get a hearing from this Congress All that he asks is that the matter be referred to the court of private land claims By the time it gets through Congress and works its way through the court Billy Mc Garrahan may be where quicksilver will be of little value to him GEORGE GRANTHAM BAIN |
