Proceedings & Collections - NSHS - Vol. IV

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SENATOR C. H. VAN WYCK.

March 4th, 1881-March 4th, 1887.

Senator Charles H. Van Wyck was born at Poughkeepsie, New York, in November, 1824; graduated at Rutgers College, New Jersey; studied law and practiced; was district attorney of Sullivan County from 1850 to 1856; was elected a Representative from New York to the 36th congress, serving as a member of the committee on mileage; was also elected to the 37th congress and was appointed chairman of the committee on government contracts; while in congress served in the volunteer service as colonel of a regiment; in 1865 was appointed a brigadier-general by brevet; was a delegate to the "Pittsburg Soldiers'" Convention of 1865; was elected to the 40th congress, serving as chairman of the committee on retrenchment; was a delegate, to the state republican convention, 1867; was re-elected to the 41st congress, removed to Nebraska in 1874; (was a delegate to the state republican convention, 1867; was re- senator (sic) from 1876 to 1880; was elected United States Senator from Nebraska for six years from March 4th, 1881. As a part of his personal history, before becoming a citizen of Nebraska, he is entitled to the following brief summary of a career as member of congress from the state of New York:

VAN WYCK AND SLAVERY.

No member of the 36th congress of 1858-60 met the pro-slavery tempest and stemmed the tide more boldly, adroitly and eloquently than C. H. Van Wyck, of the state of New York. For two months the house had been unable to elect a presiding officer, and the clerk of the previous congress had to preside while slavery made its last stand for political supremacy. Republicans, made up of Whigs and democrats of the free states, lacked a,few votes of enough to elect John Sherman, and finally succeeded with a number of "native Americans" in electing Pennington of New Jersey. The pro-slavery leaders were mostly

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of the democratic party and hence were hearty prosecutors of democratic republicans.
On this point of debate the following is collated from the speech of the New York member, March 7th, 1860.

DEMOCRACY.    As a democrat I believe slavery to be a crime against the laws of God and nature. From the deluge of democratic speeches I learn that the Alpha and Omega of your religion and democracy are the divinity and benefits of human servitude. In 1854 the invader commenced sapping and mining, seized the outworks, toppled the embattlements to the ground, stormed the strong fortress and obtained possession. Could it be expected that we should sit quietly by and see the acts of every democratic administration rebuked; could we hold political fellowship with those who were willing to crucify the memory of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe? Am I to be reproached as an apostle from. democracy? Sir, I would rather desert a political organization than to turn traitor to my own conscience and be guilty of moral treason to my own judgment. The patent of my democracy is in the records of democratic administration, and by it I stand or fall. In 1849 the democratic party in the State of New York became a unit on substantially the basis of Mr. Bronson's letter. The slave power soon forced them from it and from the resolutions of the united democracy in that state the republicans have compiled their political catechism. I only desire the democracy to see to what indignities they must be subjected if they manifest unwillingness to bow down and worship this black Juggernaut of slavery.
SPLENDID RETORTS.    Mr. Davidson, of Louisiana, desired to present to the consideration of this house one of John Brown's pikes. Let me urge him to extend his cabinet of curiosities and add one of the chains and branding irons of his coffee gang, tied with the lash with which the backs of women and children are scourged, and then, to watch them, a sleek, well fed bloodhound with quick scent trained to snuff in the air the track of the fleeing fugitive,--let him present these as the symbols, one of Brown's folly, and the other of his own high type of civilization.
   You taunt us with cowardice. Go home and ask the remnant of the gallant Palmetto regiment, who received the shock of battle on the plains of Mexico, where stood the

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New York volunteers, who, with them side by side, were in the thickest of the fight at Cherubusco, Cerro Gordo and Chepultepec, and when your gallant Butler fell at the head of the regiments of my state and yours, northern warriors joined yours to carry him from the field and regret that one so brave had fallen. Ask your regiment what you think of northern bravery. Gentlemen tell its in certain contingencies they will dissolve the Union. No, sirs, you will long have to march to the music of the Union, that music which is uprising from the fields where labor is repaid, and the workshops where industry is rewarded, from the machinery which, through the instrumentality of steam, is doing the bidding of man, and from the gigantic steamers that plough our rivers and lakes.

While Mr. Van Wyck met every argument, parried every thrust, unmasked every deception and moved upon every breastwork, his bold aggressiveness became so unbearable to the masters of the lash that Davis, of Mississippi (not Jefferson), exclaimed, "I pronounce the gentlemen a liar and scoundrel."

MR. DAVIS: Will you go outside the District of Columbia and test the question of personal courage with any southern man?
MR. VAN WYCK: I travel anywhere and without fear of anyone. For the first eight weeks of this session you stood upon this floor continually libeling the North and the people of the free states, charging them with treason and all manner of crime and now you are thrown into great rage when I tell you a few facts.

This speech, so very elaborate and exhaustive, established the fact that the New Yorker could neither be worsted in the argument nor bullied into silence, and gave him a strong hold upon a constituency who echoed his utterance, "You cannot, you dare not resist. We threaten not with bayonet, revolver or bowie knife, but with the silent ballot, 'which executes a freeman's will as lightning does the will of God.'"
Congress closed this session June 28th, 1860, and commenced again December 3d, 1860. During the interval the republicans had elected Mr. Lincoln president, and the disunionists were preparing for secession. Again Mr. Van Wyck appears upon the stage, and, clad in the armor of the fathers, challenges the con-

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stituency of the cohorts of revolution. He charges upon them that since 1842 three fourths of the territory acquired had been surrendered to slavery and their "peculiar institution" increased in numbers and power, while they posed as the friends of the Union, "par excellence," and charged all the consequences of meditated disunion upon the anti-slavery element of the country. "The very men who then could not find words sufficiently strong to anathematize those they called traitors, now seem to be courting a traitor's doom and madly rioting in a traitor's saturnalia."
After this sentence came the "fireworks," and amid a storm of excitement he was called to order. But the lion was aroused, and to annihilate the doctrines of the fathers, "Political incendiaries would trample upon the flag and burn the temple of freedom." After impaling the leaders upon their own arguments, now abandoned, they heard the fearful truth. "You have been shorn of your strength by your own Delilah, and now in your blindness would wrap your arms around the pillars of the republic and perish in its ruin." The speech was a master effort, a sunburst in a troubled sky. History was invoked, government records displayed and the cicatrix of burning, blasting denunciation applied to the wound.

FIRST SESSION THIRTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS.

REPUBLICAN APPEAL.

The first session of the 37th congress convened July 4th, 1861, and lasted for one month. Mr. Van Wyck was made chairman of the committee on revolutionary claims, and was conspicuous in urging the adoption of free letter postage for the soldiers, and even so early in the war, an investigation of army contracts, closing with the following appeal: "I appeal to my republican friends, let us be true to our former profession and see to it that plunder and peculation shall not follow on the track of our army. Let us watch the movements of the army contractors and take care that they shall not feast and fatten upon the freewill offering of the Republic, desiring that men who are so base

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as to seek at this time to enrich themselves, should be held up to the scorn of the world, never to be forgiven by the American people. Those who are pirating upon our waters under a traitor's commission of cupidity against the generous affections and benevolence of a self sacrificing nation." This appeal was based upon evidence that the army contractors and plunderers were keeping pace with the troops of the Union, and had it been safe, would have preceded them, stealing the forage and demanding its value in gold.
The second session found the New York member chairman of a committee, in hot pursuit of army contractors, their methods, and frauds, and having his analytic skill supplemented by practical knowledge in the field, being colonel of a New York regiment, "the way of the transgressor was hard."
As the adornment of the base and crowning of the summit should be germane to the object and solidity of the shaft, so, did his speech on monumental frauds instruct, convince and please as well in exordium and argument as in its peroration.

CHALLENGE OFFERED.

During its delivery a member from Pennsylvania and who had a brother in the quartermaster's department, feeling aggrieved, exclaimed, "I must have an explanation here or elsewhere." Mr. Van Wyck: "I will meet the gentleman here or elsewhere after my hour expires. I will answer him or any other man here or at any other place."
Again in the 40th congress in 1867, he appears fortified with four years' experience in exposing frauds and unmasking official delinquencies and concealment of favorites. The most adroit attacks upon the treasury or the purses of the people were alike discovered and denounced. Of a gift enterprise he said: "it contemplates taking $1,200,000 from the pockets of the people, while the most they propose to donate to the object of charity, the Gettysburg asylum, is $10,000." Another was thus described: G. W. Thomas now proposes to raise $500,000 of which $150,000 is to be drawn in prizes, and $200,000, principally, is to go into the pocket of Thomas." From this mere glance at his

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early record it is very easy to discover his natural and unavoidable place as a Nebraska citizen and senator, where monopolies, trusts and frauds cast their blasting, shadows across his pathway.

SENATE.

Hon. C. H. Van Wyck entered the Senate of the United States in 1881, as the successor of Senator A. S. Paddock; having to his credit six years' experience as a member of the House of Representatives in Congress; and the advantage of military experience and that insight which resulted from having been chairman of the committee on government contracts and of retrenchment.
To the crying demands of the times he responded as promptly as if directed by the hand of destiny, and devoted his faculties to the congenial but very unpopular work of retrenchment and reform. The few following extracts, from numerous and varied speeches, indicate an aggressive spirit, self abnegation, a will that never yields and a courage that never quails.

TARIFF. MR. VAN WYCK: We were promised during the last session of congress that we were to have a tariff so simplified that he who ran might read and understand it; but it seems that this same old thing must be continued; we must have a tariff here which requires an expert to explain and a lawyer to fully understand. I understand this theory of the protection of labor; but will the gentleman tell me, when he is protecting a few thousands in converting sawlogs in Michigan or Wisconsin into lumber, how many laboring men in this Nation does he strike and drain a tax of that amount out of their pockets? Do you say that to protect American labor from one to three dollars shall be taken out of the pocket of a man in the West and placed in the pocket of the owners of an industry that needs no protection in this land, an industry which has grown to its full strength, and which so far as the material is concerned must soon pass away? The difficulty here is that every single laborer, as you call him, must combine to protect one another, and against the people, who suffered from the exaction on them; and hence it is you find your glass interests, when suffering, are compelled to come up and push up the cart of the owners of pineries whose interests are not suffering.

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There can be no sort of reason or argument to sustain this tax upon lumber to-day. You say you admit the log free. Is it any answer when a man is required to pay $3 a thousand tax on lumber to tell him, "Yes; you can go to Canada and buy the lumber in the log and roll the log over to your home"?

During the long and protracted discussion of this subject, he held his own in behalf of reform with irresistible arguments, sarcastic retorts and pungent criticisms; returning to it again January 22, 1883, he closed another brilliant discussion, as follows:

Mr. President--The hundreds of thousands in the prairie states are not considered in the making up of this bill, men to whom the Nation is more indebted than to all of your railroads and other corporations, men who have taken up the flag of the country and gone into its wilderness in advance and planted it on every prairie and by every water course.
These men have gone from the old states; they have gone by thousands; having many of them shattered constitutions after service in the army; and I ask you in the name of American industry whether we shall protect the industry which has made Iowa what it is, which has made Kansas what it is, which has made Wisconsin what it is? DIZZY SENATORS.

The subject being again before the senate, a few days later, gave an opportunity for the senator from Nebraska to string a succession of intellectual gems upon a golden chain.

MR. VAN WYCK: Now one word. It is a very good time now to illustrate what some few gentlemen have been trying to do in this bill. It is a bundle of inconsistencies from beginning to end--your whole tariff is. It is filled with them. I congratulate myself that my friend the senator from Connecticut (Mr. Platt) is getting upon the true Republican platform now--a tariff for revenue. I am rejoiced at that; and although I may regret a little the difference of opinion among the happy family of protectionists yet it illustrated that this inconsistency has been going on to a very great extent, so that our friend the senator from New Jersey has really got dizzy by the repetition of the ideas of this inconsistency.
That is probably true. He is not the only gentleman

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who has got dizzy since we have been discussing these great problems here. WHARTON'S NICKEL MINE.

My friend from Vermont says that Mr. Wharton is all enterprising man. Certainly; he has got a mine. Who would not be enterprising if the government, would get its arms under him and give him the duty that is imposed on this metal?
   I presume the senator from Vermont means to say that the millions of this Nation shall he taxed for this one man who happens to own a nickel mine.
   My friend from New Jersey says that this nickel mine is shut up, well let it be shut up, and closed forever, if the whole American nation must be taxed,--every man who desires to buy a little of the ore made from nickel--that the whole of this American Nation must be taxed,--merely to accommodate Mr. Wharton. I care not how respectable he may be; and his one single nickel mine, I care not whether it may be valuable or not,--it costs this Nation too much to run that individual mine for Mr. Wharton.
   You will probably protect, as you have protected, the owners, of the eleven Bessemer steel companies, and tax the whole United States to do it. You cannot see it there; I believe the senator from Connecticut cannot see it there; but he can see it when it is confined to only one mine, to one man, and when it lays its heavy hand upon the manufactures of Connecticut.
   When the senator from Massachusetts talks of protecting American labor, he thinks of a few thousand men and leaves out of his view the millions who go forth and toil and grapple with the soil. who receive no sort of consideration at his hands; he has no poetry for that class of laborers. It is the blushing cheek that he desires in the female operative in his factory, but he does not think of the others. who live upon the great Prairies of the west.

A PARTY APPEAL.

A mouth following this discussion again he participated in a running debate with distinguished Senators, and made a final appeal to his Republican friends.

I want to say to my political friends, as I think I have a right to say, what will be the effect if you issue your tariff from this congress and send it forth to the people and your pledges have not been redeemed? It is not that there is a surplus in the treasury of the United States at 22

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which the people of the Nation complain. Oh, no; it is because you take the money from their pockets and put it there, and you issue a tariff, and the American people cannot know from actual knowledge that there has been a reduction of taxes. Then, verily, our work might better have ended before it was begun in this matter. We may amuse ourselves here, but we cannot amuse the American people in this way. They know they have been trifled with for years; they know that they have been bearing hardships which ought to have been removed, and they will know that there was no way except by a combination of interests-as the senator of Louisiana says, negotiations which have not been kept. BOGUS CIVIL SERVICE.

During his first congressional term in the Senate we find him dealing out sage advice to his colleagues just as he did in the House when the Republican party, in its infancy, was becoming embarrassed with political barnacles, tramps, pirates and burglars.

   I think I have a right to say that it is not prudent for the Republican party to adopt that policy which largely contributed to the destruction of the democracy.
   I claim the right to occupy that ground as a Republican to-day. I choose as a Republican here, differing with my associates, to take warning from the past, I do not like to see one of these circulars sent to a poor clerk in the Treasury Department, saying to him that he is expected to contribute not less than a certain designated amount, which is two per cent on his salary, and the mockery of telling a man whose salary would not probably give bread to his wife and clothing and shoes to his children, that it would be a pleasure and privilege to him to do this thing.
   Senators will excuse me for what I did when I heard that the committee went, not only to the pages of the state house, but also to the day laborer, when in some cases he could only work half time, and at full time would not receive enough to support his family, and mocked him by sending a circular telling him that "it is no doubt a privilege to give two per cent" of the little pittance which he receives.
   I am not for that kind of civil service; I am free to say that; but I should like a civil service that would preserve the purity of the ballot-box and the freedom of every man who is in the employ of the government.

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CRYSTALLIZED OPINION.

On a subsequent occasion when his party had suffered a political defeat his condolence was of spiritual "wormwood and gall."

My friend, who is not here tonight, was on that committee, and when I appealed on behalf of these clerks who now exercise our brethren so much, and when I alluded to postal clerks whose pay had been reduced and said it was inhuman--I think that word has been used here once or twice-to pursue those men and force political assessments from them, my distinguished friend from Maine rose and asked very triumphantly, "Who is hurt?" [Laughter.] My distinguished friend from Iowa, only a few days ago, said that he discovered that the opinion of the people had crystallized on this question of political assessments. It certainly crystallized pretty hard when it struck Iowa pretty solidly in two or three places. Fortunately for us farther west it struck Iowa so hard that it bounded over Nebraska and landed on the Pacific slope. Crystallized! The public sentiment crystallized on the question twenty-two years ago, when by the report which was read during the last session it was shown that the iniquity of the Democratic party in that matter had found them out and the people denounced them. Let us make the laws as effective and as strong as we possibly can on this matter that these men may be protected and that the ballot box may be safe from corruption.
SKILLED LABOR.

When it was determined to exclude from the country foreign laborers brought here under contract, and the subterfuge was resorted to of importing them under the head of "skilled labor," Mr. Van Wyck, uttered the following:

It is a very easy thing for gentlemen who desire to import labor under contract to have it "skilled labor." The man who works in the mines is a "skilled laborer," I think, the man who works in a factory is a skilled laborer. When the men were locked out of the glass-making establishments in this country there were found skilled workmen to take their places; and when the iron manufacturers closed their doors against American workmen because they will not work at reduced wages, and sometimes at starvation wages equal to those of the pauper labor of Europe, then it will be said that it is "skilled labor" that is to be brought under contract from foreign countries. So I move that those words be stricken from the bill.

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STEAMSHIP SUBSIDY.

On a proposition to grant a $400,000 subsidy to the Pacific Mail Ship Company, in order to encourage commerce, protecting an "infant industry," which had been paying dividends for a great many years the senator swept away the flimsy disguise.

If there be citizens of America in Japan and China and Australia needing mail facilities they are served today; they are served by the service which this wealthy corporation is enabled to give them. That is all that is desired in those. waters, I presume. For years they have been reaching those ports; for years they have been amassing sufficient money in the carrying of commerce to declare liberal dividends.
CONGRESSIONAL GRATITUDE.

In attempting to discharge the duty of a reformer and protect the Treasury from legalized pillage the Senator had often to place gallantry in abeyance and discard for the moment all conditions of adventitious circumstances of sex or social position. Accordingly several years after $57,000 had been appropriated to cover all the expenses attending upon General Garfield and his burial; and after the pension of Surgeon-General Barnes (one of the attendants) had been raised from $30 to $50 per month, and an item in all appropriation bill offered Mrs. Garfield an additional $5,000 on account of meritorious services of her husband, Mr. Van Wyck moved to strike out the amount. The severity of the Senator's logic caused him to pay the debts of the government from the treasury, and to draw upon his own funds for gratuities and charity.

ANNUAL CLERKS.

Occasionally his lessons of economy and equity were specifically directed to his colleagues.

MR. VAN WYCK: If there is any justice or honesty about the distribution of this part of the patronage--or plunder, as it should more properly be termed, patronage if we choose to call it by a milder term, because probably one-half the persons employed about this building are not necessary--we should act equally. We have doubled the ex-

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penses connected with the running of this part of the Capitol beyond what is actually necessary.
   It is significant that we have here clerks of committees carried on the annual roll to-day when there is no pretense of necessity or duty for them. Why do the appropriations committee, who watch everything so carefully. stiffer this to pass out of their grasp and fasten committee clerks on the treasury, when there is no necessity for them? We have messengers at $1,400 a year and the compensation of others is increased and so is that of the clerk of the appropriations committee. I should like the senate, if possible, to be consistent on one line or the either, either, on the basis of honest equality for all the committees or on the basis of economy.
   If it is a donation, if it is a gift, a matter of favor to a senator, having charge of it committee, let it be uniform. That is all.
MORMONISM.    MR. VAN WYCK: The point of my amendment is as to the necessity of this cumbersome and expensive commission being still further continued in the service of the Government. A board of army officers can discharge this duty equally as well, and save expense to the treasury, if that is a matter ever to be considered; but I suppose not.
   Under the general desire and supposed necessity to keep on depleting the treasury. probably that will not be an argument in favor of my amendment. But I insist that we can trust the President of the United States to select three army officers who can discharge the duty of registering the voters and counting of the votes, and then act as a returning board. Undoubtedly the President would be careful to send men of good moral influence among the Mormons, and he will be careful to select army officers who have not duplicated their pay accounts too often so as to raise money to gamble in cards and in stocks. And then if the President is under the necessity of taking some officers who have been in the habit of frequenting Washington, I think we can trust, him to select those men who have not become too incurably fixed in polygamous habits here in Washington, so that we would get reasonably pure men.

The senator's amendment contemplated saving $25,000 on the salaries of five commissioners, and a large amount in rents stationery, transportation, etc.; but it failed to receive an affirmative vote.

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SUNDAY OFFICE WORK.

At the third meeting of the Senate, March, 1885, in executive session, for the confirmation of the appointees of President Cleveland's cabinet and officers, Senator Van Wyck introduced a resolution directed to the new Secretary of the Interior, asking for information relative to the patenting of certain lands to the Texas Pacific Railroad, "whether the clerical force employed worked nights and Sunday so that they might be completed before March 4th." The Secretary, who should have worked the Sunday force March 3d, had become a Colorado Senator the next day, and was present to respond to the resolution.

MR. VAN WYCK: Mr. President, it. will be considered by the American people a matter of sincere regret that an administration--a successor to those commencing a quarter of a century ago to break the power of organized capital and check the aggressions of the greatest monopoly that ever cast its blight on this continent--should have clouded its good name far more than word or act of its enemies in the last day of its existence; that in the last agony of dissolution its final act should be at the dictation and in the interest of corporate wealth, whose power has grown to be as omnipotent and whose aggressions as deadly as those of the one overthrown. Beginning for the establishment of universal rights, it has traversed all zones to the highest elevation, only to be hurled in the end to the antipode of abject and humiliating surrender in the face of the Nation to a more tyrannizing monopoly than dominated the Republic in former years. Breaking the bonds of slavery, it subjugated the Nation to the fetters of corporations.
Why should clerks work night and day and insult the religious sentiment of the Nation by working on Sunday? What the necessity, public or otherwise? This Republic was not to perish on the 4th of March; its continuity was not disturbed by changing the executive; there was no suspension of powers and duties; all business proceeded as heretofore. Did other of the executive departments work their forces nights and Sundays to have the incoming administration start with only new business? Was it dangerous to trust the representatives of the people in the next congress? Was there danger, that the rights of settlers on these lands would be recognized and the public domain protected by the incoming administration? If so, then it evidently has not been installed too soon.

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THE GOVERNMENT.

During the last congress of his senatorial term, having called upon himself the indignant exclamation of a Senator, "Let him back out of what he said yesterday," the defiant Senator from Nebraska retorted:

Our democratic brethren arraigned us very severely only last fall and have been doing it for several years past. They arraigned us in many matters, for the wasteful expenditure of money and wasteful extravagance in giving away the public domain. The government is not here. I would say to my friend from Connecticut: It is not in your little commission; it is not in your executive departments; it is at the hearthstones and homes of the people of Connecticut, and Missouri and Kansas and Nebraska. There is your government to-day, in the hearts of the American people; and when their representatives here, when their executive departments of congress fail to live up to what they believe to be the true principles of government, then they rise up as they did twenty-five. years ago, when they turned the Democratic party out of power and as they did Iast, fall when they turned the Republican party out of power. They are the government; there is where the government is.
But we have been taught to believe that there must be no word said against, no arraignment made of officers of the government, no reflection on the administration; no attempt to criticise (sic) those in power; and yet it was said by an eminent senator, that this body is suspected of being controlled by monopolies; I think that was the point then. Is not that a serious charge? This is a branch of the government, and yet it is suspected. And the senator from Connecticut brings that sacred, holy halo around the administration, and wants to have it so bright and brilliant that the common vision will not undertake to peer and look beyond it.
DEMONETIZING SILVER.

The chairman of the Judiciary Committee having declared no parties in the Senate or outside attempted to demonetize silver, Mr. Van Wyck responded:

Some years ago national banks in New York made an attempt to demonetize by ostracising (sic) silver, but as they were the immediate creatures of the law they shrewdly calculated the hazard of that venture. Now the wedge is to be entered in a different shape. Capital is arraigning itself

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against the law, the almost universal sentiment and prosperity of the people--a bold, deliberate strike, done with malice aforethought against the interests of the masses, the interests of labor. Severe penalties are denounced against those who debase our coin. Why should not adequate punishment be provided for those who are seeking only its debasement but its complete overthrow?
Capital, by its extravagant and illegal demands, is arousing the storm it professes to dread, and when it succeeds, as surely it will, in forcing a stern and active protest, it will then appeal for protection to the government whose laws it has set at defiance.
ECONOMY.

Having moved to increase the pension allowance of minor children and being met with the cry of economy, the Senator said:

Oh, yes, it is all very well; but this cry springs from the money center. It does not come from the great muscle of this land that pays the most taxes. The people who toil are not finding fault with what you pay out for pensions. The complaint does not come from the workshop, or the farm, or the counter. Oh, no; but the money centers have become alarmed; you see it in the great city of New York. An elegant statue was proposed to be erected. and a great City with its host of millionaires cannot find money enough to build even the pedestal to hold it, and they appeal to others for aid; to the men who drive the street cars, who work for sixteen or seventeen hours per day, and who then do not get money enough to break their fast. They are appealed to to raise money enough to complete a pedestal to receive the great work of Bartholdi. There is not a minor child on the pension roll but would ask my friend from Illinois and my friend from New Jersey and my friend from Kansas to stop just long enough to protect this very class.
WASHINGTON MONOPOLIES. From the experience of the last three or four years one thing is evident, that three great powers in this city control--own, I might almost say; probably control would be nearer the truth--the congress of the United States. Three Corporations, I would say to my friend from Iowa, substantially own the congress of the United States. It is not necessary for the senator to be alarmed. I do not mean owned in a commercial sense, but controlled to the extent of either doing or refusing to do what the corporations

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demand of congress. That is all there is of it. That is the beginning and the end. Take the Washington Gaslight Company, the national banks, and the railroads, steam and car, no matter how little and insignificant. even a bob-tail line. They control the congress of the United States to-day, and have done so for some few years past.

On the supposition that congress gave railroads the right to occupy streets without providing a mode of assessing damages, Mr. Van Wyck said:

   They were thrown on their common-law rights. Congress, so liberal in bestowing these privileges, I presume did not think it was wise to protect the citizens of Washington having residence upon either side of the streets, which they generously turned over to the occupation of the railroad corporations, and I think the senator will find that these citizens were driven to the courts in order to obtain redress. So it seems these mammoth corporations can take congress by the throat, and although it sits nine months in one year, and three in the next, the great representatives of the American Republic tremble before these huge corporations, and the only remedy for the individual, the citizen (who has no protection by reason of any self control on the part of the people here or any regulation of their own affairs) is that he must go to the courts singlehanded and alone to deny the right of a railroad company to enter the highways and streets and destroy the value of his property, and make it useless.
TREASURY SUPPLIES.    The surplus is becoming somewhat problematical. The senator from Connecticut secured the passage a few days ago of two bills--twins, I think they were called--evidently appearing about the same time and running their race about the same time; twin bills, twin in point of time and amount, each $8,000,000, and twins for effecting the same object; that was to get some steel manufacturers to make steel, and yet not a gun built out of the $16,000,000.
   True, $1,000,000 were appropriated for a gun factory, and the other millions for the production of steel; and after we get the steel, and the steel is a success, and the steal out of the treasury is a success. and the manufacture is made, then they will consider the question of making the gun. It is a steal on the government, as the senator from Kansas suggests. [Laughter.]
   MR. RIDDLEBERGER: How do you spell it?

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MR. VAN WYCK; That will be referred to the civil service commission. The people are asking that the surplus shall be dried up; and not that indiscriminately, and without any regard to the public interests, the treasury shall be thrown wide open and have the draining process there.
When the people of this country are asking to be released from taxation they point to the treasury being full to over flowing; so that there may be some relief in internal revenues and customs, duties and taxes; and the point is to stop the mouths of the people by taking away, or drying up that argument, so that they can be told, "The treasury is empty, and therefore this taxation must go on." This is the way you propose to drain the treasury and empty it of its resources.

ELECTION OF SENATORS.

In the expiring days of his senatorial term of six years, he delivered a most exhaustive speech upon a proposition to amend the constitution of the United States so as to secure the election of the United States senators by direct vote of the people.
Having examined the causes which made senators originally subject to legislative conditions, he claimed that a crisis was approaching in which the people would recall the delegated power and wield it through the omnipotence of the ballot box.

Mr. President--When capital, in defiance of the constitution and laws, can demand payment of debts in gold coin only; when the upheaval of labor can be repressed by indictments and title or imprisonment for a conspiracy; when the more dangerous conspiracy of capital, in Black Friday, in control of the coal fields of the East; when a syndicate or one man can purchase seventy coal mines within a radius of fifty miles of Saint Louis, and no protest is heard, no courts or indictments, at this communism of wealth, this anarchism which threatens, not individuals. not a party, but the entire Republic; when throughout the northwest the virgin soil is being exhausted to raise grain, make pork and beef, the producer receiving hardly the cost of production, and when the product reaches the seaboard so encumbered with railroad and other charges that meat three times a day, our former boast, is often denied the laborer; when to the relief of the Nation comes the president of a powerful road, with the exhilarating and comforting assurance that this great unrest, this persistent demand of labor for reward sufficient to furnish substance, this clamor of producers that grain shall return in price enough to pay the

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bare price of production is only an indication of unusual content and prosperity and a promise of greater beneficence and glory to be spread over the Republic; when the tenant class is yearly increasing; when three-fourths of all the farms in the Republic are mortgaged; when the additions of wealth are largely to those who count possessions by thousands of millions, and labor must return thanks for the privilege to toil for reward which hardly provides board and clothing, there is a crisis impending. Could those leaders who have placed the Republican party in peril, stripped it of its usefulness by denying living principles, compelling the active present to feast only upon the memories and reminiscences of the past, draw nearer to the hearts and hearthstones of the masses, seek to give a genuine protection to honest labor, there would soon be "life in the old land yet."
   You remember when Sumner charged slavery with being the great crime against nature. Corporations have taken the place of slavery. Unfortunately there is no Sumner to arraign it, while it is being strangled by those intrusted with its care and perishing in the face of the very generation--the actors and theatre of its greatest achievements. Corporations and their servants, like slavery and its masters, can learn nothing by experience; blinded by pride, impelled by avarice and greed, will listen to no suggestions, make no concessions in recognition of justice and right until disaster gathers about them. The democracy carried slavery and fell, although in falling it did not entirely perish.
   The Republican party has carried monster corporations equally as unrelenting and exacting, and is reeling, stumbling and falling with the terrible load. And the humble warner waving the signal flag of danger is run down and crushed as an enemy in the path of bloated, unrelenting, and unreasoning power.
   Shades of Sumner, Lincoln, Seward, Chase, and the great army of martyred heroes, who we trust are not allowed to suffer pangs because of the political debasement which must be endured by the remnant of the grand Union Army at the spectacle that the Republican party has lost the popular branch of the government, has lost the executive. And now, reckless, nerveless leaders tell us there is a crisis, as I hey madly beat the waves threatening to submerge the last feeble, frail resting place; and in their insane folly talk about straight, reliable partisans to be elected in defiance of the express demands of the people to save what is left in the upper branch of congress. In the same spirit and in the same hope they talk of the horrors of an overflowing

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treasury and blindly suppose relief will come to the people by draining it out rather than stop unjust and oppressive taxation, which fills it by draining the pockets of the people.
Year by year the party becomes weaker even here. The desperate remedy is prescribed that the influence and wealth and took of huge corporations shall be invoked to overthrow the people and secure a temporary victory while the leaders appear as unconcerned its to the real cause or danger and safety as was Nero when he fiddled at the destruction of Rome. During this time waiting power is departing from the senate and in their desire to save they contribute to the certainty of defeat.
And thus it becomes more necessary that those occupying seats in this body should receive their commissions directly from the hands of the people. A political crisis is approaching, when, driven from the popular branch, from the executive, the last resting place of it once great party. which had done more for mankind and made it larger chapter in history than any preceding, can alone be secured on this cold and majestic eyrie only by not allowing the Republican senators to be elected by Democratic votes--a wisdom equal to the ostrich which thinks its body secure by hiding its head in the sand.