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Show What Congress Does. A Wash-, ington letter-writer to the New York Tribune admirably describes the tendency tend-ency of congress to tinker with all sorts of subjects, from tho least to the greatest. Members pass, he says, from the consideration of constitutional amendments to a discussion of tho price of hair-pins and tack -nails. Senators Sen-ators vole to buy an island in tho West Indies, and then turn their attention at-tention to giving away a half acre in California, or to paving a street in Washington. In fact, congress puts its hand upon everything, absorbing the functions of State legislatures, and even of municipal law-making bodies. It looks after tho levees of Louisiana and the domestic relations of people in Utah, shipbuilders in Maine, fishermen fisher-men in Massachusetts, merchants in New York, miners in Pennsylvania, tobacco-planters in Virginia, cattle-raisers cattle-raisers in Ohio, corn-growers in Illinois, Illi-nois, rice-planters in South Carolioa, lumbermen in Wisconsin, gold diggers in Colorado, wine-makers in California, and men of a thousand other occupa- : tions have all an immediate concern, j in person and iu pocket, in the doings j of congress. |
