control. The real legislative chamber is the Committee of Conference, in which the Senate has the mastery.1

Thus the conditions under which the House does business destroy its liberty of action, and it is subjected to the rule of interests that are in a position to avail themselves of the complications of the committee system. That rule is odious, but it is irresistible so long as the conditions which promote it continue to exist. The results which we are now witnessing exactly conform to the prophecy of Alexander Hamilton, in describing the consequences which manifest themselves when legislative action is not guarded by institutions that subordinate particular interests to the general interest. He said:

"The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good." 2

1 In a brief speech delivered in the House, May 13, 1884, Mr. John Sherman of Ohio said : —

"We have by our practice heretofore gradually extended the powers of Committee of Conference, until now a proposition to send a bill to conference startles me when I remember what occurred in the Committee of Conference on the tariff bill last year. I feel that both houses ought to make a stand on the attempt to transfer the entire legislative power of Congress to a committee of three of each body, selected not according to any fixed rule, but probably according to the favor of the presiding officer or the chairman of the committee that framed the bill; so that, in fact, a committee selected by two men, one in each House, may frame and pass the most important legislation of Congress."

2 The Federalist, No. 22.

V

SOME COMPARISONS WITH OTHER COUNTRIES

CONGRESS habitually disclaims responsibility for the results of the methods it employs. Responsibility is shifted from the House to the Senate, or from Congress to the Executive, or even to the mass of the people, which is a convenient place to put it, for if the people themselves are to blame, they have no right to find fault with their representatives. In reviewing the appropriations of the first session of the 60th Congress, Chairman Tawney said : —

"The responsibility of the House of Representatives in respect to the appropriation of money from the federal treasury is a direct responsibility we owe to the people. It is a non-partisan responsibility."

This view of the case is emphasized in the head-lines which he supplied to his speech as published in the Congressional Record.1 They include this averment :

"The Insistent Demands of the People and of the Public Service Result in an Increased Aggregate."

In his review at the close of the second session of the same Congress, Chairman Tawney again laid the responsibility on the people themselves. After declaring that the sum total of the appropriations of the session "exceeds the amount of present and prospective revenues," he said:

1 Congressional Record, Vol. 42, No. 138, May 30, 1908, p. 7609.

"The great increase in expenditures is attributable to insistent Executive recommendations and a misguided public demand for the inauguration and execution of new projects without a due realization of the consequent charges." 1

At the close of the same session Mr. Hemenway, of Indiana, a member of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, made a statement offering the same argument in favor of a release from responsibility. He contrasted estimates with appropriations actually made, and he figured that in the last seven years Congress had reduced the estimates of the executive departments by an aggregate amount of $274,000,000. In concluding his remarks, he observed:

"I invite the attention of the country to this table. It shows the facts, and although the estimates were not reduced to the extent many of us wanted, Congress has not added to its popularity with the people by the reductions it did make, for on the whole the people have been with the Executive in urging that all recommendations of the Executive be carried out." 2

These pleas appeared at a time when it is the practice to put matter in the Congressional Record for campaign use, and obviously they were meant as excuses by the majority party in Congress. Thus it appears that congressional responsibility is transferred to the executive department, and then that is exonerated on the ground that it has been responsive to the desires of the people. It follows that if the situation is to be amended, the people must themselves say what shall be done. The logic of much congressional utterance is like that of a physician who might tell a patient,

1 Congressional Record, Vol. 43, No. 69, March 4, 1909, p. 3913. 2 Congressional Record, March 3, 1909.

"All that you have to do is to say what you want me to give you, and I will gladly write the prescription."

The practice of the opposition is to put the blame on the party in power, despite the fact that members of all parties coöperate in passing the "pork-barrel" bills. Senator Tillman of South Carolina, who is blunt of speech, has declared that when general stealing is going on, it is his business to see that his state gets its share. In the course of Senate debate he candidly declared: "The whole scheme of river improvement is a humbug and a steal; but if you are going to steal, let us divide it out, and not go on complaining." 1 When the naval appropriation bill was before the Senate in 1899, he remarked: "We have a little orphan of a naval station down in South Carolina, for which I am trying to get a few crumbs of this money which is being wasted." 2

1

But when Senator Tillman gets what he has described as his share of the steal, that does not prevent him from censuring the administration for extravagance; and, in general, while members of the minority take as large a hand in the grab game as they can, they do not acknowledge any responsibility for the results. The fact that they help to produce these results is too

1 Congressional Record, March 4, 1901, p. 3906.

In this effort Senator Tillman has been remarkably successful. During debate in the Naval Appropriation bill in 1909, a tabulated statement of navy-yard expenditure was presented, from which it appears that in the six years, 1902-1907, inclusive, the expenditure upon the Charleston Navy Yard aggregated $2,592,829.30. During that time no use at all was made of the yard for naval purposes, and the value of the work done is officially returned as "None." See Congressional Record, Vol. 43, No. 55, February 17, 1909, p.

patent to be denied by any respectable apologist, but it is contended that their participation is not such as to incur responsibility.

At the close of the first session of the 60th Congress, Mr. Fitzgerald of New York made a statement in behalf of the Democratic members of the Committee on Appropriations, in which he said :

"I challenge the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations now, and I shall yield to him to answer, to name a single item of large appropriation where the Record does not show more Democrats recorded against it than there are Republicans recorded against it. (A pause.) The gentleman does not care to answer. I make the assertion that in every instance when his committee was overridden, or when appropriations were improperly enlarged, more Republicans voted the reckless appropriation than did the Democrats, and more Republicans in proportion to their numbers in this House than Democrats. With a majority of fifty-seven members in this House it is a pitiable spectacle for the Chairman of the great Committee on Appropriations to have to plead that the majority of fifty-seven was unable to prevent the minority from looting the Treasury." 1

Thus it appears that no matter what the connection of congressional factions with the process may be, there is a common determination to avoid responsibility for results. In the transfer of responsibility which goes on, that which selects the executive department as the scapegoat seems to be peculiarly audacious, in view of the way in which congressional procedure confines executive management. No business principle is better established than that, in order to be responsible for results, an agent must have control of means. Congress habitually violates this principle. The Post

1 Congressional Record, Vol. 42, No. 138, May 30, 1908, p. 7613.

E