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Show INTELLIGENT EXPENDITURE. Senator Newlands of Nevada has induced in-duced tho U. S. Senate in its expiring hours to lake a vote that carries with it good sense and that it is hoped may prove a working precedent. The Nevada Ne-vada Senator holds that tho methods of appropriating mouoy for the improvement im-provement of rivers and harbors has been utterly unscientific, wasteful, and scandalous. Under the pressure. of his sound sense and importunity he has induced in-duced the Senate to vote to discontinue .tho present system of gralvbag legislation legisla-tion for rivers and harbors, and to vote a lump sura whore any appropriation at all is made, and leave the application applica-tion of tho money to expert river and harbor commissioners. The practice heretofore has been that Senators and Representatives work for local appropriations in their States or districts, without much regard re-gard to tho merit of the work to be xinaertaKcn. xno main thing is to have Federal money applied locally for the benefit of business and the employment of labor. Senator Newlands sees the futility of all this, and looking over tho vast appropriations that have boon made from time to timo and undertaking undertak-ing to check up the beneficial rosults therefrom, ho finds that the country has practically wasted moat of the money that has boon put into projects of that kind. Senator Newlands would establish a general scheme of river improvement, and would stop all the scattered, do-I tailed appropriations that have no relation rela-tion to the general system of waterway water-way improvements. Under his" plan there would bo definite propositions worked ont in a scientific way, and the money appropriated would bo applied ap-plied where results would come, and where the general river systems of the country would be correlated, and the navigation made practical for any given river sj-stem. .First of all, the main rivers, would be attended to, and .then the tributaries so far as thoy are capable of being made navigable" We are glad to see that the Senate had this good sense to voto for the NtnvlandH proposition. That is precisely what Tho Tribune has boon working for for mauj- years; and if the Senate Sen-ate will now stick to its doclared purpose, pur-pose, wo may hopo to have a systom of water navigation that will ho of real benefit lo tho country at large, in plnco of boing merely of political benefit bene-fit to local schemers who rido into popularity pop-ularity b3 reason of tho amount of Federal money that they can have spent in their localities. Senator New-lands New-lands certainly deserves well of his country for pushing his wator-way proposition as he has done, and getting the Senate to agree with him on scientific scien-tific and well planned expenditures for river improvements. |
