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Show Some Breezy Gossip in Eelation to One of the Main House Committee. Com-mittee. A COURT THAT SETS IS JUDGMENT. The, Men Who Begulate the Commerce Manufactures and the Labor of the Country. Washingto, April 21. Tho ways and means committee of tho houso has just linished its task of preparing a new tariff bill. What is this ways and means coin- metal, glass ana earthenware, sugar sirups in little bottles, and many J of such things. Clerk Carson is Tll building up a ways and means rani, composed entirely of these sample tides, and rangiog in variety from, from Sheffield to the hide of a S American steer. ' After the hearings are conclur' real work of making a tariff hill bp This is done with closed doors, and!! tho ma jority of the committee pate. When the Republicans areiapr, the chairman and his party friendi tire to some private room to dotl work in secret. Meanwhile the Dei crats stand by and complain of this "4 lantern" method. When the Demo:' are in power they get off in some pi by themselves, and then the Republic raise the cry of dark lantern metho Such, it will be observed, is politics America. It is a serious job which these mm; dertaue wnen they sit down in prm A tariff bill is a formidable. don Tradition has it. that IU average n bill contains 4.000 items. A recent w dent of the United States used that m ber in his message to congress to il trate the importance of the neat. But the number gives no adequate i; of the scope of a tariff bill. It is a thi which cannot be expressed in numbe Leaving out the few hundred items e tioned in the full list, everything known to the people, everything it they wear, drink, snioko or use in it homes, on their persons, in their! offices, factories and fields, bearsai of duty. And here sit the eight potentate commerce, of trade, of manufacne twisting the industries of the cos: about thoir Angers by the simple puts on of fractions and per cents, or b;i taking away of the same. Prosperity adversity to hundreds of important dustries follows each letter which i clerk puts down on paper at the tion of these eight men. Is it anyw, der the ways and means is con! the greatest of committees? Is iti wonder that it usually absorbs the 1 brain and largest experience of congr? When the majority have finished ti bill they report it to the full commie The minority then for the first time see it. No matter whether they life or not it is the bill, and thus p the bouse, and, accidents barred, to statute books. Now the minority begins to from bill of its own. It, too, needs a cob tee room. For half a century them and means has bad but one apartus Now it has two. A few days agoSf er Reed took possession of the ladies ception room, closed up an entraas the Capitol and mada of it a waysi means meeting place. It is a F! esque apartment, all marble in wall ceiling, a huge portiere at oneeii with two rows of columns, each te the Thomas Jefferson American a of maizo and tobacco. Here meet these representatiw Democracy men whose name knowp from one end of the count: the other Mills, Carlisle, Brectim-McMillin, Brectim-McMillin, Flower. In the outer room Chairman H; ley, the Little Napoleon of Protectw surrounded by Dingley, Gear.Lafe Bayne, Payne, McKenua and Burrc an array of brain and loyalty of ; the Republican party is proud. mittee, and now does it work f it is the most powerful committee of congress. It is a court which sits in judgment on the commerce, the manufactures, the labor of the people. No other thirteen men in the land have go much responsibility, so mucli power, as have they. All the governors of states, all the cabinet ministers, all the justices of the supreme court, are as pigmies compared to them. As parties go and legislation is carried on, a ways and means committee of the house of representatives repre-sentatives possesses authority that is almost al-most monarchical, for it prepares the laws in which is exercised that greatest function of government, the taxing power, pow-er, and the political party which hail made the committee generally enacts the measures which it prepares and proposes. pro-poses. - - ' ' The ways and means committee is the federal taxing board. It not only determines de-termines how much money shall flow into the coffers of the government, but whence it shall come. The taxing board of a county or city as a rule lias power only to fix the sum to be collected and to pro rate that among all property owners, so much tax to each hundred dollars of assessed value. No such restriction? bind the autocrats of the ways and means committee. It is within their province to let one man go scot free of taxes and to tax another to death; to say to one manufacturer, "You shall prosper and wax rich," and to his neighbor, "You shall be ruined;" to extinguish or kindle furnace fires; to open or close the doors of factories, and to stop or start tiie ereat emrin?s in mills and mines. This is a tyrant's power, but it is precisely the power wielded by the thirteen men on whom we are to look. The ways and means committee, of course, represents in a majority of its members the party in power in the house of representatives. It is appointed by the speaker, and in this creation of committees com-mittees lies that power of the speaker's office which makes it easily the second office of importance in the United States government. The chairman of the ways and means committee is by tradition and common consent the leader of the house. He is usually a man of long experience and great ability. Tradition says, also, that eight of tho members shall be in accord ac-cord with the majority of the house, while five shall be appointed to represent the minority. The chief duty of the committee is preparation of a taxing of tariff bill. As a preliminary to this a programme of Hearings' is arranged. On appointed days the representatives of various manufacturing, man-ufacturing, commercial and agricultural interests are invited to be present and offer arguments concerning the changes in the law which they desire. These interests in-terests are never backward. They come to the front always in large numbers. They come from all parts of the country and from every walk of life. Here millionaire mill-ionaire manufacturers like Carnegie aud Spreckels meet plain, blunt farmers like Mr, Brown, of York county, Pa., and Mr. Piollet, of Bradford county. Sometimes Some-times great lawyers appear before the committee to make arguments for their clients, and members of the house, and senators also, for their constituents. These tariff hearings are held before the full committee, Democrats as well as Republicans. The doors are open, too, and whosoever will may come. Often large crowds assemble, and help to make up a scene of rare-interest. In the middle mid-dle of a room about thirty-five feet square is a long, wide table. It is covered cov-ered with books, papers and documents. Surrounding it are thirteen chairs, and the table just in front of each chair bears the name of one of the members. Here sits the committee, and crowding about are hundreds of spectators, only a few of whom can find seats. The house rules against smoking dj not obtain here, and every other man. has a cigar in his mouth. Of cau.no the air is very bad, and about once in ten minutes an old man who stands in the rear of the room with a long pole in his hand reaches up and pulls down a window. Seven or eight minutes later, when the men with bald heads begin to complain, the old man pushes the window up again. Thus, while we are learning something about we taxing power of our povernment. we also gain aa insight to the crude methods of ventilation practiced in the trovern-tnent trovern-tnent s greatest building, into which a score of millions of the tax money hare been poured. J ' wh,ocome to present arguments argu-ments before the committee bring wiS, hera great numbers of samples. Sow the b,g table is covered withecesTf i Cloth, bunches o wgol..fraeme |