Mr. Buchanan to Mr. Day.
Buenos Ayres , October 1, 1898 .
Sir: I have the honor to advise you that the claim of Capt. Thomas Jefferson Page, which has been before the Argentine Congress for so many years, was day before yesterday finally passed by that body, and to append on the overleaf a copy of my telegram of yesterday so advising you.
The sum awarded by Congress was $4,242.35, Argentine national (paper) currency, to be paid in national 6 per cent internal debt bonds. These bonds were provided by an act of Congress some several years back to cover internal obligations, and, as the national exchequer has been depleted by the country’s heavy expenses during the past few years, Congress, as well as the Executive, adopts this plan for paying all claims it can.
[Page 5]The amount awarded is exactly that recommended by the executive power when the claim was presented to Congress, now some fifteen years ago. At that time, however, gold was the standard “currency” here, and the recommendation of the Senate committee then was that the bill should be paid in “national currency,” which recommendation the Senate at once confirmed.
It will be remembered that in my dispatches I have explained that when the claim then reached the House of Deputies it was discussed and amended to read $780, which sum that body approved; that Captain Page refused to accept that sum, and that the claim has ever since slumbered in the committee room of the House of Deputies.
Knowing all this, I have felt certain ever since I have had anything to do with this claim that the best thing that could be expected from the committee of the House of Deputies, within whose room it has slumbered for the past ten years, would be that they might be induced to recommend its approval in the form it had reached them from the Senate years ago. Beyond that I was convinced they would not go. I therefore felt that whatever the amount awarded, it would in all probability be “current money,” because of the fact that, notwithstanding gold was current when the claim was filed, it was not specifically named either in the recommendation of the executive power in the beginning or of the Senate committee at that time.
Owing to the Chilian boundary question and other matters of importance claiming the attention of Congress this year, it has been considerable of a task to secure attention for this old claim. I was so desirous, however, to get some sort of a settlement for Captain Page that I allowed no opportunity to pass wherein I could do anything to that end, and am therefore glad to be able to say that, through the generous interest taken in the case by the speaker of the House and the chairman of the committee of claims and the kindly recollectien of Captain Page had by several of the older members of the Senate, I am thus enabled to write you that the claim has been concluded.
All I could do was to use my best efforts toward getting the claim out of the committee’s room, where it had lain so long, and through Congress in the best shape possible.
This I have done, and only hope the result may be measurably satisfactory to the claimant and my course meet your approval.
I have, etc.,