Harbor and river appropriation bills of $18,000,000! Thirty-two new buildings commenced in the States, almost every one of which has had buildings before! Two million five hundred thousand dollars appropriated for the commencement of those buildings, for laying the foundation! Before they are finished $25,000,000 more will be needed to complete them! While these enormous appropriations were being made there came up from the country a demand for a revision of the tariff, which was confessedly greatly needed; for a revision of the internal-revenue laws, which was equally necessary; for a reduction of taxation pressing so heavily upon all the interests of the country. Our honorable friends upon the other side of the Chamber chose to answer that demand by a bill repealing the taxes upon perfumery and cosmetics and bank checks, and met with a sneer of derision and ridicule every effort that was made on this side of the Chamber for a reduction of taxation.
Mr. President, it was these methods of administration, it was these acts of the Republican party, which made it possible for the Democratic party, and other men who prized their country higher than they did their party, to elect in Ohio a Democratic ticket by eighteen or twenty thousand majority, and elect sixteen out of the twenty-one members of Congress assigned to that State. I say elected sixteen, perfectly conscious of the fact that thirteen of them only have received their certificates at present. If three of them, against whom the aggregate majority is only sixty votes, do not receive certificates under the action of the returning board or under the powers of our judiciary which have been invoked, they will be seated, as they ought to be, at the beginning of the next session of Congress in the other house.
Under the impulse of this election in Ohio, upon these facts and influences which I have stated as being of great importance there, it became possible for the Democratic party and its allies, whom I have described, to elect a Democratic governor in New York, in Massachusetts, in Kansas, in Michigan, and various other States in which there has been none but a Republican governor for many years past. The same influences enable us, having accessions to our ranks from Iowa and Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, to have at the beginning of the next session of Congress an aggregate of perhaps sixty or more Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.
Mr. Hale. Will the Senator from Ohio let me ask him a question right here? As he is confining himself very closely to the civil service of the Government, I should like to ask him one question here relating to that. He has appealed directly to the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, who was not present at the time, although he has just come in. The Senator from Ohio has alluded to the remarkable speech made by the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations upon the expenditures of the Government at the last session, and the wonderful scene that was exhibited there at that time. In that speech on the expenditures of the Government, by the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, was the admission that the aggregate expenditures were seventy-odd millions of dollars more than the year before—remarkable when in that speech of the Senator from Iowa, the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, he showed that every dollar was accounted for by deficiencies on the part of the previous Democratic Congress and by the increase of pensions and some other matters.
Mr. Pendleton. I remember the speech of the Senator from Iowa very well; I have quoted it repeatedly from the Record, in which I found it. I did him no injustice; I know he will not believe I would intentionally do him injustice at any time. I stated then, I stated a moment ago, I have stated it on the stump, I repeat it now, that the Senator from Iowa in that speech said that the appropriations for the current year were $292,000,000, and that they were $77,000,000 in excess of those made for the last year: and I might have added if I chose to make it a partisan affair, that the last Congress was under Democratic control.
Mr. Hale. And did he not account for every dollar of that $77,000,000 increase? But I think I will leave it to him, as he is present now.
Mr. Pendleton. Undoubtedly he accounted for it, for he gave all the items that went to make up the $77,000,000.
I am confining myself more closely, Mr. President, to the discussion of the reform of the civil service of the Government than the Senator seems to apprehend. I was showing to him the causes of this very remarkable revolution in public sentiment which we have seen as exhibited by the last election. I attributed that result in great measure to the defects in our civil-service system and to the demoralization which, arising there and in its practices, has reached the other departments of the Government.
Mr. President, I was about to say when the Senator from Maine interrupted me that I begged gentlemen on this side of the Chamber and I beg the Democratic party throughout the country not to mistake this result of last fall as a purely Democratic triumph. It was achieved by the Democratic party with the assistance of men of all parties upon whom their love of country sat heavier than their love of party. It was a protest made by an awakened people who were indignant at the wrongs which had been practiced upon them. It was a tentative stretching out of that same people to find instrumentalities by which those wrongs could be righted.
The people demanded economy and the Republican party gave them extravagance. The people demanded a reduction of taxation and the Republican party gave them an increase of expenditure. The people demanded purity of administration and the Republican party revelled in profligacy; and when the Republican party came to put themselves on trial before that same people the people gave them a day of calamity.