Ever since our government was founded, there have been, no doubt, many persons who feared that there would eventually grow up a too close intimacy between the executive and legislative departments. This fear has in part prevented the heads of departments from being members of the House of Representatives. And yet they wield a tremendous influence in shaping legislative action as it relates to their departments. The secretaries are consulted by members on the floor of the House and the Senate on all important matters in which they are interested. Why not give them the rights and privileges of membership, that they may represent their departments in person? It might be the means of throwing new light on many vexed questions in the administration of the government.
After sixteen years of neglect and broken treaty stipulations the Congress of the United States is moving to provide Alaska with a simple, inexpensive government and school system. Strangely enough the portion of the bill pertaining to schools is the one that meets with the most opposition in Congress. That it shall not be defeated, and the native population of Alaska be deprived of educational advantages, it is in order for the readers of The Chautauquan to show their interest in education by petitioning Congress to pass this bill.
Every congressional season we have revived for public discussion in one form or another, “Who is first lady at Washington?” At the New Year’s reception, Mrs. Carlisle, the speaker’s wife, stood next the President, while it is maintained that the wife of the Secretary of State should have occupied this position, and that Mrs. Carlisle should have stood “below” the Cabinet. The President settled the dispute by inviting Mrs. Carlisle to stand by his side.
As knowledge increases, the tests applied to men for service grow more severe. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company has been inquiring into the color blindness of their employes, a very important matter, when we think of the relations of signals as they are used on the road to the safety of human life, as well as to the protection of the rolling stock of the company. Dr. William Thompson, the ophthalmologist by whom the work was conducted, discovered that one man in twenty-five is unfit for service where prompt recognition of color signals is required. Some who are color blind do indeed distinguish correctly between danger and safety flags, but, as Dr. Thompson suggests, they are guided by form, not by color. It might be some security, therefore, to make every danger signal peculiarly recognizable by both its form and color.
Shall the government take charge of the telegraph service? is a question that has not come up in any shape for discussion in Congress, and we doubt if it will receive much attention in either House or Senate in the immediate future. There is one objection to the government assuming control of this branch of public service, viz.: As the leading daily newspapers of the country are now conducted, they depend on the telegraph companies for facilities to transmit the Associated Press dispatches, and since this is the only medium the people have for the quick transmission of news, and it is feared that if the general government should get charge of the wires, the administration, if it were Republican or Democratic, would have the power indirectly, if not directly, to shade the news, and we would be in danger of losing what we now have—a free press. While monopolies are to be dreaded, still we believe that the present management of the telegraph system is preferable to anything we would be likely to get from the government; a change would be hazardous. “Better endure the ills we have than fly to those we know not of.”