Mr. FIFSSENDES. I am opposed to the amendment to the amendment, as I am to the original amendment. If one is wrong, the other is, and I do not want to give additional strength by having the 2 coupled together, which it might or might not do; I do notknow how that would be. My friendfrom Massachusetts closed his speech with an appeal to the Senate to do justice as he called it, and I hope really that the Senate will endeavor to do so. I also appeal to the Senate to kee this bill free from additional legislation. the argument is quite as strong with reference to other depts as it is with regard to the State dept. According to the Senator’s own statement the salaries are the same, and Senators may very easily see from the amendment proposed by the honorable Senfrom Iowa what the result must necessarily be. We must spend the night here in squabbling over proposed amendments to put on the other Depts. Now, sir, in the 1st place, as I understand it, I have seen no recommendation from the head of anyone Dept recommending a general increase of the salaries of the clerks. The Senfrom Massachusetts has not told us that the SecyState recommends this increase. We have no such recommendation from the SecyWar; and Iyknow that the SecyTreasury has made no such recommendation. There is one thing they do desire, probabl, and that is that there shall be an increase compensation given in a few special cases. If Congress chooses to do that, I have no objection; but I have an objection to reorganizing the Depts on a bill of this description. It is bad and hasty legislation. But the Senator has used one or 2 arguments to which I beg leave to allude. He says, in the 1st place, that we have raised the sala ries of ourselves. So far as that is concerned I am not responsible for it, for one; but it is not done yet; it is only done so for as the senate is concerned. In the next place, if that has been done, or is considered as having been done, it is, I suppose, because a majority of the Senate thought that we were not well enough paid; and we are the judges of that. There is no other tribunal to appeal to. We recommend it and act upon it. We are the head of this dept in reference to that matter. So with regard to the clerks and employes here. We think that their y is too low and that it should be raised. cact in a double capacity in these cases; but no head of any of the Executive Depts has recommended to my knowledge any general increase of the salaries of the employees in the Depts. I know with regard to the Treasury it is not so and I know, moreover, that if ap‘plied to one Dept it must go throng all of them necessarily. This is a general increase of salary, because the arment is used, and used with great effect, “ ’ou have begun with one Dept; apply it to the others; treat us all alike.” That is the result of it, and it is very difficult to resist the argument, because they are equally meritorious. Now, I know with reference to the Treasury Dept that it is merely in a very great degree a waste of money to do any such thing; that a large number, and the largest number, much the largest number of the clerks in that Dept are paid today all that they ought to be paid; and to tender them 20%. increase is merely taking money out of the Treasury because we happen to take a fancy to take it out to give those who serve the public, With no reason whatever to justify it. The argument that we have placed $160,000 at the disposal of the SecyTreasury for the nrpose of increasing salaries does not apply. That is notfor a general increase of salaries, it is for the nrpose ofavoiding the increase of salaries. and)I put it on that ground in the 7 Senate. There are certain clerks to whom you must pay more to keep them; there is also a necessity for temporary clerks to be employed there; and it was with reference to those cases that that amount of moneyis placed at the disposal of the Secretary, not to raise salaries generally but to avoid the necessity of it, and thus save money; and so it will prove in all the other Depts. And yet here is a proposition to put on this 20%., beginning with the State Dept, not called for, not asked for by the head of that Dept, because the clerks a ply to a committee of this body, and thus we e in a system which must necessarily be carried through. I have had occasion to remark before thatin my judgment on the main question we are getting into the habit of dealing with a very lavish hand, care lessl, with regard to the public mone very much so in the other House, in my judgment, and not less so in this. Times have changed, and we have changed with them. Before the war we used to hesitate about appropriations, examine something about them; gentlemen considered themselves the guardians of the public Treasury and were averse to making appropriations. Now the race seemsto be who shall e foremost in making appropriations out of the public Treasury, who shall exhibit the great est zeal to take money out of the Treasury at this time to put into the hands of somebody, and now absolutely in this case we go limiting up persons to whom to give the pubic money. I think that is worth being considered. But, sir, what I have principally to deal with is the fact that in this kind of legislation upon these bills we are following an exceedingly bad precedent. The Senate is gettin out of its usual strictness on that subject, an we are running into very dangerous territory indeed in the way of legislation. I have no unwillin ness to have these Depts reorganize. I shall be glad to aid in doing it; I think they need it; but let it be done systematically; let it be done for some good reason, and let us not, to avoid the trouble incident to that, just take the whole in a sweeping clause and apy it. p Sir, if we have done wrong in increasing by avote of the Senate, so far as that could do it, our own pay and that of our own employees, it is no reason why we should do wrong in another direction. The Senator says, having begun we must go on. We had better retrace our steps if they are in a wrong direction. The doctrine that we must go on in wrong, if wrong, because we have begun, is not exactly to my mind a legislative idea. It is to be presumed whatever we have done we have done for good reasons, satisfactory to ourselves as applied to the individual case or cases; and it by no means follows that because we are satisfied of it in one case we must do it in all others. I think the exerience the Senate had in the civil or miscel aneous appropriation bill for the last 3 days, when 'wewent staggering, and I had almost said blundering, on in it, and came to a point almost where it seemed to be impossible to pass the bill, would be enough to warn us not to attempt to follow in the same course with regard to another bill at this period of the session, and really I use the language of my friend, though I cannot use it so pathetically as he did I do appeal to the Senate to keep the bill clear from amendments of this description.