jects. The moral character of H. R. 10419 must be determined by inquiring whether this particular bill is reasonable in amount; whether the improvements would be of general benefit; whether they are all useful to any one; and whether the methods of administration are wise.

In answer to the first question, there has been a pretty steady increase since 1822; but it has not in proportion gone beyond the increase of the general expenses of the government; and the bill for 1887 is, compared with those of the nine years past, by no means excessive.

Was the bill of general utility? If not, it was from no lack of effort to make it cover the whole area of the United States. It is a little hard to judge how useful the greater number of works may be; for some of their names are not always familiar, and several of the places mentioned in the bill modestly avoid the publicity of a gazetteer. Of course, every New Englander knows precisely the location of the western channel of Lynn harbor, leading to the Point of Pines, and sees the national necessity for its receiving $1,000. But why should Hyannis Harbor get $5,000, Aransas Pass $60,000, Wappoo Cut $2,500, and Upper Willamette River $7,500? They all seem of equal importance to the great commerce of the United States. Why should Duck Creek, Delaware, have $3,000, and Mispillion Creek, in the same State, which has a much larger name, be put off with $2,000? Why should Currituck Sound, Coanjok Bay, and North River Bar, North Carolina, receive conjointly only as much as Contentnia Creek, near by? Is it fair that money should be appropriated for the Big Sulphur, the Yallabusha, the Pamunkey, the Chefuncte River, and Bogue Phalia, while our own Charles is put off with a pitiful survey? What power other than a modern language association can ever hope to "improve" the Rivers Skagit, Steilaquamish, Nootsack, Snoquomish, and Snoqualmie?

There is other than geographic evidence that some of the items in the bill might well be omitted. In January, 1883, the Secretary of War made a report in which he designated ninety-two items in the previous River and Harbor Bill, carrying $862,500, as not of general benefit. His reasons are instructive: in one port the annual revenue collected was $23.25; in another there was no commerce whatever; in another, the real object of the appropriation was to provide hatching grounds for the Fish Commissioners. Some rivers were incapable of permanent improvement; in others, the people had themselves obstructed the stream. One creek lay wholly within the limits of the city of Philadelphia, was an open sewer and was barred by permanent bridges; all the water of another could, when examined, pass through a twelve-inch drain; and a quarter of a

million had been appropriated, practically to protect land from the effects of hydraulic mining. Thirty-one of the items considered reappear in the bill of 1887; and it would be impossible to say how many new ones are of the same sort. The great rivers and harbors in the bill of 1887, the improvement of which is at once seen to be national, take up $5,570,000; the remaining $4,200,000 was not likely to benefit any one outside the limits of the State within which it was spent.

In the present low state of public sentiment as to national expenditures, one might perhaps admit appropriations which do benefit some commerce, however local. But our bill, like most of its predecessors, contains provisions for the expenditure of money which will benefit only the owner of the water-front, or the contractor, or the laborer. There is an item in H. R. 10419 for "the protection of the Illinois shore opposite the mouth of the Missouri River." There is an appropriation of $300,000 for the Missouri, purposely distributed among points where there are railroad bridges; and the understanding was, that it should be used to protect the approaches. Indeed, why should money be spent upon the channel of the Missouri? Senator Vest, of Missouri, frankly states that from St. Louis to St. Joseph there are but three steamers plying, and another member of Congress states that the draw in one of the bridges had been opened but once in a year. Some of the appropriations have left no other trace than the wages and profits of people within the district.

Here is a specific case, no worse in principle than a hundred others. Years ago the United States Government granted very valuable lands to aid in the construction of a canal connecting the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. Having thus given the canal a value, it then proceeded to pay $145,000 in cash for the canal, leaving, however, to the original owners the right to the water-power. It has further spent upwards of $2,000,000 on the improvement. At the present time, according to a student in Harvard College who lives on the line of the canal, there is one small steamer making regular trips, and the only practical value of the improvement is that the government keeps up the water-power for private parties, who have recently sold it to other private parties for $3,000,000. For improvements wholly within the State, in the bill of 1881, Florida received for each $1,000 of valuation $7.16; Oregon, $4.09; New York, 21 cents; Pennsylvania, 10 cents, and Iowa, I cent. It is not too much to say that, under the bill of 1887, $2,000,000 would have been absolutely wasted, and $2,000,000 more would have been of local benefit only.*

* The writer will be greatly obliged to any person who will send him authenticated accounts of similar cases in which government appropriations have been misused.

There remains one question. Is the money spent upon undoubted national improvements wisely spent? I cannot think so. The first great defect of the system is, that too many works are undertaken at a time; every man wishes to see the wall built (by somebody else) over against his own house. Of the four hundred and thirty-nine works contemplated by H. R. 10419, in only eight cases is the appropriation sufficient to complete the work; the yearly dole is necessary in order to hold the yearly vote; whatever the estimate of the engineers, the application of the per-cent. rule by the committee makes it impossible to secure the finishing appropriation for any work. Pressing works are kept incomplete, or swept away because half finished. Yet the government is entering upon new and costly enterprises. The engineer reports no summary of the probable expenditure upon works now in progress; it can hardly be less than $200,000,000. Every year new surveys are introduced, almost without opposition; they become the basis of new estimates and new appropriations.

The natural effect of indiscriminate expenditure is to discourage private enterprises. The government not only undertakes works for which private capital might be secured, but it has entered upon the purchase of existing canals and river improvements. The administration of the river and harbor improvements is honest; the engineers, for the most part army officers, capable; but the whole system is crippled by the constant interference of Congress. If that body choose to begin a Hennepin Canal involving twenty to thirty million dollars, the War Department has no choice but to carry it out. A certain degree of discretion the secretary does exercise; he withholds money from the grosser jobs; he accumulates balances unexpended, against the year when the bill may fail; he insists on complete and comprehensive plans before great works are undertaken; but he is subject to calls for information from either House, and to attacks to which he cannot reply. Let me quote one single sentence from one of these Congressional amenities; it appears that the Secretary of War had approved of the removal of an engineer whom the Oregon people liked, but in whom the department lacked confidence. A senator from Oregon said: "Mr. President, I desire at this time to call the attention of the Senate and the country, and especially of the people of the Pacific Northwest, who are vitally interested in the speedy opening up of the Columbia River to free and unobstructed navigation, and who are, by reason of their peculiar situation as to transportation facilities, in no humor to be trifled with by questionable arbitrary action or non-action upon the part of executive officers, civil or military, some of the latter of whom have grown in a measure officially haughty, arbitrary, and to a degree intolerant, not to

say insolent, by reason of having been for years protected in desirable assignments in Washington, mainly, as many are, through the baneful instrumentality of social influence rather than real merit, which in this great capital too often makes and unmakes men, to the manner in which, during the fall of 1886, the will of Congress was set aside, and the execution of its act in appropriating $187,500 for the continuance of work on the canal and locks at the Cascades of the Columbia suspended, unjustifiably, to the great detriment of the people's interest, and to fix, if we can from the record, the just responsibility for this high-handed, unjustifiable, and wholly illegal act upon the official or officials justly chargeable therewith."

The administrative commissions, particularly those in charge of the Mississippi and Missouri River improvements, chiefly made up of expert engineers, fare no better. Their plans are rejected, their estimates cut down, their members assailed. The bill of 1887 takes pains to ignore the Missouri River Commission. In fact, all commissions and all secretaries are considered servants of Congress.

The secretaries are at least not appointed by or removable by Congress, but by the third member of the legislative body. We left H. R. 10419 waiting for the President's signature; it waits still. In the absence of any power to veto items in appropriation bills, a power repeatedly suggested in Congress of late, he exercised the one possible check on bills containing a mixture of good and bad provisions, and on bills which reach him too late for examination. In refusing to sign it, he followed the worthy example of Jackson, Tyler, Polk, Pierce, and Arthur; as Congress adjourned before ten days had elapsed, it did not become a law.

Let us sum up the brief existence of H. R. 10419: it was prepared by a laborious committee, and introduced by an honest chairman; it contained some provisions good and useful; and some needless, wasteful, and badly applied. There was opportunity for fair debate in the House. The Senate loaded it with amendments, some of them iniquitous; and the House conferees yielded to them. It was passed because a majority of the members of both Houses desired specific appropriations, which could not be obtained without voting the whole bill. It failed, because, while pretending to be for the public good, its real basis was a combination of private and ignoble interests.

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS.

Allent Bushwell Haut

JOURNALISM AMONG THE CHEROKEE INDIANS

No Indian nation on this continent has such a remarkable journalistic history as the Cherokee. Se-quo-yah, their great schoolmaster, in 1824 perfected for them an alphabet, the first alphabet ever invented by aborigines for more than a thousand years. Se-quo-yah, like many inventors, had been ridiculed and even accounted crazy by his tribe, and on many a fine morning his wife, who had little patience with his meditative and philosophic ways, could be heard chiding him for his laziness. In spite of all opposition he persevered, and having spent nearly as much time in persuasion as he had in inventing, he at length convinced his people of its utility. Hence it was that, in November, 1825, the Cherokee Council resolved to procure two sets of type, one fashioned after Se-quo-yah's invention and the other English, and also to procure a printing-press, and the general furniture necessary for a well equipped printing-office. By the following November the work had so far assumed shape that the Council resolved to erect "a printing office, 24 x 20 feet, one story high, shingle roof, with one fire-place, one door in the end of the house, one floor, and a window in each side of the house two lights deep and ten feet long, to be chincked and lined in the inside with narrow plank." February 21, 1828, the iron printing-press of improved construction, and fonts of Cherokee and English type, together with the entire outfit necessary for publishing a newspaper, was set up at New Echota, Georgia, and the first copy of the Cherokee Phenix was given to the world. The Phonix was not only the first aboriginal newspaper on this continent, but it was printed in the most perfect orthography. Elias Boudinot was the first editor. He was aided by the missionaries of the American Board. The Phanix was the average size of the newspapers of the day, and one-half of it was printed in the Se-quo-yah alphabet. By resolution of the Council, the printer's apprentices were boarded and clothed at the expense of the Council, and the editor was forbidden to publish scurrilous communications, or anything of a religious nature that would savor of sectarianism. The first prospectus read as follows: "The great object of the Phonix will be to benefit the Cherokees, and the following subjects will occupy the columns: First, the laws and public documents of the nation; second, accounts of the manners and customs of the Cherokees, and their progress in education, religion, and arts of civilized life, with such notices of other

VOL. XVIII.-No. 1.-5