CONCLUSION OF DEBATE ON THE DEFICIENCY BILL.

Mr. BURNES. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to return to certain previous paragraphs of the bill with the view of offering some amendments which I think will meet the approbation of the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Missouri asks unanimous consent to return to some paragraphs of this bill for the purpose of submitting amendments suggested by the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Let the amendments be first reported, so that we may know what they are. After our experience of the other day in allowing a return for some amendments, while others were cut off, we want to know what is to be offered.

The CHAIRMAN. The amendments will be first read, after which the Chair will ask whether there be objection to returning to the previous parts of the bill for the purpose of amendment.

Mr. CANNON. I ask my colleague on the committee [Mr. BURNES] to recollect the agreement made the other day that the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. YosT] should have fifteen minutes.

The CHAIRMAN. The Chair is reminded of the fact, to which the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. CANNON] calls attention, that at a previous sitting of the Committee of the Whole unanimous consent was given that the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. YoST] should be allowed to address the committee for fifteen minutes after the disposition of the question in regard to the point of order. That question having been now disposed of, the gentleman from Virginia is recognized for fifteen minutes. Mr. Yost resumed his remarks, begun on a previous day.

Mr. BURNES. I ask unanimous consent to return to different portions of the bill for the purpose of offering amendments.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Missouri [Mr. BURNES] asks unanimous consent to return to different portions of the bill for the purpose of offering amendments. The Chair will cause the amendments to be read, and then submit the question as to whether unanimous consent will be given. The Chair again requests members of the committee to resume their seats and to stop conversation. Mr. BURNES. I ask unanimous consent that the amendments be reported. The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Missouri asks unanimous consent that the amendments may now be reported.

The Clerk read the same.

Mr. BURNES. I beg to offer this explanation to the committee. The parts that we propose to strike out of this bill have been taken care of in the sundry civil bill in conference, so that it is simply to strike them out of this bill in consequence of that fact.

The CHAIRMAN.

Is there objection to this amendment at this time?

There was none, and the amendment was adopted.

Mr. BURNES. I now offer another amendment, which I send to the desk. The amendment was read and adopted.

Mr. BURNES. I also offer another amendment, which I send to the desk. The amendment was read, as follows:

Insert :

"For support of United States prisoners, including necessary clothing and medical aid, and transportation to place of conviction, being for the service of the fiscal year 1887, $25,000."

Mr. BURNES. I wish to say, Mr. Chairman, that the only object of this amendment is to remedy a defect in a provision which is now in the bill and has been passed upon by the committee. The gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. COTHRAN] submitted an amendment which was incorporated in the bill, but we have thought that the language of the amendment which has just been read would probably be more effective. It is intended to accomplish the same object as the existing provision. There is no change in the amount and no change in the purpose, and therefore I hope there will be no objection to this amendment.

The amendment was agreed to.

Mr. HOOKER. I propose to recommit this bill, with instructions, to the committee.

Mr. BURNES. I demand the previous question on the engrossment and third reading of the bill and amendments.

The SPEAKER. The Chair will state to the gentleman from Mississippi that after the previous question is ordered his motion will still be in order.

The previous question was ordered.

The amendments were agreed to in gross.

The SPEAKER. The question now is upon ordering the bill to be read a third time.

Mr. HOOKER. I move to recommit the bill, with instructions to report it back to the House, leaving out the fourth section, and to report back the subject-matter of the fourth section in a separate bill.

Mr. CRISP. Mr. Speaker, I raise the question of order on that motion.

Mr. BURNES. I make the point of order on that motion.

Mr. HOOKER addressed the House on the point of order.

Mr. BURNES. Mr. Chairman, I rise to a point of order.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman will state it.

Mr. BURNES. I ask whether, in the discussion of a point of order, the presiding officer is required to sit and hear criticisms upon other matters not by any possible chance involved in the question at issue.

Mr. SENEY. I hope the gentleman from Missouri will not insist upon his point of order.

Mr. BURNES. I do insist upon it, absolutely and unconditionally.

Mr. SENEY. I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Mississippi may be allowed to proceed.

Mr. BURNES. I rise to a point of order.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman will state it.

Mr. BURNES. I submit that a motion to recommit, which this substantially is,

is not debatable.

Mr. HOOKER. I think it is; I differ with the gentleman. I understand the

Chair so holds.

The SPEAKER.

The Chair thinks the motion is debatable, because the previous

question has not been ordered upon the passage of the bill.

Mr. HOOKER. I will then proceed.

The motion of Mr. HOOKER to recommit was finally overruled by the Chair. Mr. BURNES. I now demand the previous question on the passage of the bill. The previous question was ordered; and, under the operation thereof, the bill was passed.

REMARKS ON A BILL FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A UNITED STATES ORDNANCE FACTORY.

AUGUST 15, 1888.

Mr. SOWDEN. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. BRECKINRIDGE] very aptly stated the case when he remarked that this was an entirely new proposition, and as such was amendable. We have presented to us in this bill a proposition to appropriate $750,000 for the purchase and erection of a national foundry for the manufacture of guns, and a contest has sprung up as to where the plant should be located. My amendment provides for the establishment of this gun foundry at South Bethlehem, Pa. ***

Mr. COX, I wish to occupy only one minute in calling attention to the remarks of the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. DALZELL], who seems to think very lightly of the recommendation of the officers selected for the purpose of reporting upon this subject. The report of the Gun Foundry Board was published in 1884. I read from a part of the minutes of that board:

*

**

GUN FOUNDRY BOARD,
PHILADELPHIA, Pa., Wednesday, November 21,

1883.

The board then proceeded to consider the selection of two sites to be recommended for Govern ment gun factories, and decided upon the Watervliet arsenal, West Troy, N. Y., for the purposes of the Army, and the Washington navy-yard, D. C., for the purposes of the Navy.

I submit that this ought to be conclusive with gentlemen who desire fair, just, and intelligent legislation.

Mr. BURNES. Mr. Chairman, if a foreign war shall come upon this country it will come like a stroke of lightning from whence, or striking nowhere, we cannot now form even an idea, much less a reasonable judgment as a basis for works of defense. It is just as likely to come against our Southern as against our Northern border; against our Western as against our Eastern shores. Therefore, independent of every consideration of safety in the location of a public work like this, it seems to me exceedingly important that such an establishment should be located at a place from which easy access may be had in every direction, not only for the manufactured articles to be produced therein, but for a like ingress of the materials of which they are to be composed.

Mr. SOWDEN. And Bethlehem is just the place.

Mr. BURNES. I love the name you give, but it is one signifying peace and mercy rather than tumult or guns of war.

At Pittsburgh you have everything in the way of communication and transportation that can be demanded. If you wish to go southward to the Gulf coast, to the city of New Orleans, a place where Americans once made a memorable and victori

ous stand, you can go by a half dozen different lines of railway and by a continuous line of navigable water way. If you wish to go to the great Northwest a dozen lines of railroad, the greatest and most powerful in the country, are at your command. If you should wish to enter Canada in the far West, the Ohio and Missouri rivers through without change-are ever-ready servants of your transportation. The Upper Mississippi too is alike ready to carry your guns to the northward if your lines of railway should be destroyed, as might be the case. I am speaking with reference to a proper location of the proposed works. I look at it alone as a business proposition, in connection with which you propose to spend vast sums of the public money. I do not favor the expenditure. I am for private enterprisefree competition and open doors for American genius and free American labor. Sir, the great center of population in this country has been too long ignored and defied, not only in national works of industry, but in general appropriations, and as well in general legislation and governing policies.

Sir, the center of population will soon be in the very district now so ably represented by my colleague [Mr. DOCKERY] or in that represented by myself. It is not now upon this border, upon this eastern fringe of the Republic; but up and down this eastern coast, and mainly up, the power of government, the power of appropriation, the power of legislation, the power of politics, the power of finance, and the power in almost everything of a national character, except that of honest toil on the farm or in the shops, have been too long held with an iron grip, to the detriment of the great and growing power of the masses, which will some day assert itself, and the great central heart will refuse to permit itself to be used at will by the extremities, whose unreasonable greed is insatiate. That great heart will, sooner than you think, demand equality, demand perhaps the permanent seat of government. Then power of legislation and government, the fair play which, sooner or later, every American will have, will be found where the power of the people is, and that is certainly west of the Alleghany Mountains.

Mr. Chairman, a word as to Watervliet. Will you transport your raw material for great public works, national works, works for the public defense, to Watervliet, located, they tell us, on a single line of railroad, up the Hudson river, beyond Albany, near the Canadian border, or, I might say, too near to it for safety? Will you thus sequester the enterprise, away off in an obscure village, over mountains and rivers, and transport everything for hundreds of miles to and from it? Or will you establish your works at the point where God placed the material right at your door ready for the skilled hands and sturdy brain of trained and veteran workmen ? Will you accept the wisdom of the great Creator and take this raw material where it lies in the bowels of the earth, and there, by the light and heat of His gas, manufacture it into what you want or have some poor fears you may want; or will you by adopting Watervliet take all this material over the mountains and up a single line of railway to an obscure and unnatural place of manufacture merely to be transported back in its manufactured form?

But it is said the military authorities have recommended Watervliet. Shall the American Congress, because a few military gentlemen who, by some inscrutable dispensation of Divine Providence, find themselves housed in the city of Washing