is suggestion of a "Force Bill" rekindled sectional
bitterness. One State refused to be represented at the World's Columbian
Exposition of 1893, a United States marshal was murdered in Florida, a
Grand Army Post was mobbed at Whitesville, Ky. Parts of the South
proposed a boycott on northern goods. Many at the North favored white
domination in the South rather than a return of the carpet-bag regime,
regarding the situation a just retribution for Republicans' highhanded
procedure in enfranchising black ignorance. Sober Republicans foresaw
that a force law would not break up the solid South, but perpetuate it.
The House, however, passed the bill. In the Senate it was killed only by
"filibuster" tactics, free silver Republican members joining members
from the South to prevent the adoption of cloture.

A Treasury surplus of about $97,000,000 (in October, 1888) tempted the
Fifty-first Congress to expenditures then deemed vast, though often
surpassed since. The Fifty-first became known as the "Billion Dollar
Congress." What drew most heavily upon the national strong-box was the
Dependent Pensions Act. In this culminated a course of legislation
repeating with similar results that which began early in the history of
our country, occasioning the adage that "The Revolutionary claimant
never dies." By 1820 the experiment entailed an expenditure of a little
over twenty-five cents per capita of our population.

In 1880 Congress was induced to endow each pensioner with a back pension
equal to what his pension would have been had he applied on the date of
receiving his injury. Under the old law pension outlay had been at high
tide in 1871, standing then at $34,443,894. Seven years later it shrank
to $27,137,019. In 1883 it exceeded $66,000,000; in 1889 it approached
$88,000,000. But the act of 1890, similar to one vetoed by President
Cleveland three years before, carried the pension figure to $106,493,000
in 1890, to $118,584,000 in 1891, and to about $159,000,000 in 1893. It
offered pensions to all soldiers and sailors incapacitated for manual
labor who had served the Union ninety days, or, if they were dead, to
their widows, children, or dependent parents. 311,567 pension
certificates were issued during the fiscal year 1891-1892.

While thus increasing outgo, the Fifty-first Congress planned to
diminish income, not by lowering tariff rates, as the last
Administration had recommended, but by pushing them up to or toward the
prohibi