MERCILESS TASKMASTER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15503, 9 January 1914, Page 4

MERCILESS TASKMASTER

NO CONGRESS HOLIDAYS.

MESSAGE FROM MR. WILSON,

[FROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT.]

Sax Francisco, December 8. Congress is beginning to look upon President Woodrow Wilson as a merciless taskmaster. Himself an unremitting worker, he is keeping the national legislators grinding away at what will without question prove to be the longest continuous performance in the history of the United States. Congress was called in special session on April 1 last. That session lasted up to the moment of the beginning of the regular session, on December 1, and only a fiction divided one from the other. The regular session certainly will not end before July or August nest. When the legislators are relieved and permitted to return to their homes they will, therefore, have been continuously at work for 16 months or more. There is much grumbling at Washington among members of Congress, but President Wilson has the whip hand and insists upon school being kept summer and winter. Members of the House of Representatives are elected for a term of two years, and are paid a salary of £1500 a year. Their chief complaint against the President is that by keeping their noses to the grindstone he prevents them from getting in personal touch with their constituents and preparing for the election which will follow immediately upon the adjournment next August. By tho people, however, President, Wilson's action is admired and defended, and the Congressmen know it. There is considerable criticism of Congress based upon the fact that, while they have been in session many weeks and months, they have done very little work. In the seven months' special session just concluded only one piece of legislation of first-rate importance was enacted, and that was the revision of the tariff. Ths general belief is that Congress spent infinitely more time on this measure than was warranted, especially in view of the fact that tariff measures of one kind and another occupied at least half the working hours of the legislators throughout the four years of President Taft's term. A Currency Reform Bill, making far-reaching changes in the national banking syrtem, has been persistently urged upon Congress by the President, and it was lis earnest wish that it be passed into law during the special session. It has been freely discussed, but it now appears that the Senate will not enter upon a serious debate of the measure until after Christmas. March will be reached before the measure is enacted. In other words, Congress will have been in session for a whole year, from April 1 to April 1, and will nave passed only two Bills of major importance. It is not surprising that caustic comments are made in the press on the lack of efficiency of the national legislative system. "Collier's Weekly, for instance, remarks :—" It is impossible longer to deny that a machinery so complicated as to turn out only two pieces of major legislation in a year must be renovated in the direction of efficiency." li) his message to Congress upon its meeting in regular session on December 1, which he read in person, thus shattering the precedents of 100 years, President Wilson outlined a wide field of work for the legislative body. He expects them to buckle down to it right away, and there will not bo the usual recess over the holiday season. Mr. Roosevelt was in the habit of inundating Congress with messages of 60.000 or 70.000 words, sufficient to fill a fair-sized book. President Wilson has his own way. His message was a concise, admirably-phrased document, which he read in less than half-an-bour. The Congressional leaders of both parties admitted it to Ik? a statesmanlike deliverance. Particular interest attached to it as the first general message to Congress written by President Wilson. On the subject of Mexico lie made it plain that the policy of the Government is against armed intervention ; wailing and watching seems to lie the attitude of the Wilson Administration, ;iroii-ding.i4tp ;; .l-his expression of its leader. The next bi*'domestic problem the Administration is expected to attack is that of the regulation and control of trusts. He placed this question in the forefront during his electoral campaign last year. In the message of Congress he presents no programme farther than to mention the desirability of an early amendment of the Sherman Anti-trust Act "to prevent private monopoly more effectually than it has yet been prevented." and an announcement that lie would later address a special message to Congress dealing with this subject. Amongst oilier important features of the messa-go wore an endorsement, of the building of a railway in Alaska by tho Federal Government ; the urgent necessity of legislation providing for rural credits in the seasons when the crops are being: moved ; self-government fur Porto Rico and Hawaii ; ultimate independence for the Philippines; and a policy of ''common council and conference " between the Federal Government and he States on tho question of the conservation of natural resources, such as rivers, forests, and coal deposits,.