The spirit in which members use their opportunities is illustrated by the following extract from House debate relative to a legislative commission that visited Europe to investigate immigration :

"Mr. MACON. I am advised, so far as that is concerned, that the gentleman from New York [Mr. BENNET] appointed several persons connected with this immigration investigation who are constituents and friends of his. I do not know whether that is true or not.

Mr. BENNET of New York. That is true. I appointed all I could get.

Mr. MACON. And at as high salaries as you could get for them and as many as you could get?

Mr. BENNET of New York. That I admit, and so did every member of the commission."

"Mr. MACON. I said I had heard the gentleman did make appointments of many of his friends.

Mr. BENNET of New York. I will say to the gentleman from Arkansas that I did appoint every one that I could, wherever I found a competent man to do the work, and I got every appointment I could, the same as we did for every Member of the House that came to us - Democrats or Republicans."

"1

As a result of such tendencies the expenditure on legislative account is enormously greater than in other countries. The British Estimates for 1907 provide a gross allowance of £42,543 (about $212,000) for the House of Lords; and £60,250 (about $300,000) for the House of Commons.2 These amounts cover the cost of the official staff of the houses of Parliament. For

1 Congressional Record, January 25, 1910, Vol. 45, No. 28, p. 981. It appeared in the course of debate (p. 945) that the commission had expended $657,992.67, and wanted more.

2 House of Commons Sessional Papers, 51, 1907, pp. 77, 83.

maintenance of buildings, furniture, fuel, stationery, printing, and general supplies, there are additional estimates aggregating £196,170 (about $980,000) – -a total of $1,492,000, against which there is a set-off amounting to £32,450 (about $162,000) for fees, as under the rules certain charges are made for committee hearings on private bills. Thus the net charge upon the public treasury for the Parliament of the United Kingdom was $1,330,000 as against $13,788,886 in 1908 for the Congress of the United States.1 The House of Lords is composed of 615 members, our Senate of 92; the House of Commons is composed of 670 members, our House of Representatives of 391 members.

The public printing is a bottomless sink-hole in our finances. The entire amount appropriated in 1908 by the British Parliament was £748,053 (about $3,740,000), "to defray the expenses of providing stationery, printing, paper, binding, and printed books for the public service; to pay the salaries and expenses of the stationery office; and for sundry miscellaneous services, including reports of parliamentary debates." It is simply impossible to get at the corresponding expenditure in the federal government, as the departments purchase their own supplies. Congressional expenditure in 1908 included $6,394,810 for the "Public

1 Report of the Secretary of the Treasury for 1909, p. 21. There are heavy items of legislative department expenditure, covered by appropriations for executive department expenditure. For instance, the cost of congressional seed supplies is put upon the agricultural department, and the cost of congressional mail matter is put upon the post-office department. An accurate classification of expenditure, such as is made by the British Estimates, would make the comparison still more discreditable to our national legislature.

Printer."

In this one item alone many millions of dollars can be saved annually by consolidation of service and ordinary precautions against waste.1

5. Increased Hostility to Executive Authority

The sort of management which Congress now applies to matters within its own exclusive province it continually seeks to extend to the other departments of the government. In discussing the legislative department Madison remarked: "It is against the enterprising 1 Senator Carter in the course of debate said:

"Infinite duplication occurs in the various departments of the Government. We have eight or ten different map-making departments now working in the city of Washington, some making maps for the Coast and Geodetic Survey, others making maps for the War Department, others making maps for the Post-Office Department, others making maps for the Interior Department, and so on down the line. One map-making concern, with a number of skilled men, could perform all of the work with a moiety of the cost. So it is with printing. Every department of the Government proceeds in its own way with the printing of documents, and this abuse has continued until we are now renting extra buildings in the city of Washington to house the great accumulation of useless documents duplicated indefinitely." Congressional Record, February 21, 1910, Vol. 45, No. 50, p. 2205.

The following statement occurs in a committee report submitted to the House of Representatives:

66

'The entire number of old pamphlets and publications which are now in the folding room and for which there is practically no demand exceeds a million copies. There is in the vaults perhaps a thousand tons of worthless printed paper, which cumbers the earth and is of no value to any one. The great volume of such a mass of publications, for which there is no demand and of which the folding room is making practically no distribution, shows, it seems to the committee, the necessity for some action on the part of the House." Congressional Record, January 8, 1910, Vol. 45, No. 15, p. 436.

H

ambition of this department that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions." Congress holds a contrary opinion, and its favorite attitude is that of vigilant concern lest the enterprising ambition of the executive department shall overthrow the republic and set up royal state on its ruins. When the appropriations for the executive department are under consideration, congressional oratory resounds in favor of economy. But in 1908, when the disbursements for the legislative department aggregated $13,788,886.42, those for the executive department aggregated $404,523.50.1 In this respect the cost of American government stands in shining contrast to that of other countries, in which - with the exception of Switzerland - the cost of maintaining the offices of the chief magistrate far exceeds that borne by the United States. It is in the field of congressional cost that the comparison is humiliating and disgraceful to the American people.

While Congress is fond of viewing with alarm the increase in the cost of government, it keeps augmenting it by continual effort to extend congressional patronage by means of stipulations annexed to the appropriations, and any attempt at executive economy meets with inflexible opposition. During President Roosevelt's administration an executive commission, commonly known as the Keep Commission, was appointed to study departmental methods. That commission made a report recommending changes that would reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of the public service. Congress paid no attention to the report, but a proviso known

1 Report of the Secretary of the Treasury for 1909, p. 21.

as the Tawney amendment was included in the Sundry Civil Appropriation bill of the session, prohibiting any further action of the kind by the executive department.1 Congress itself is always willing to appoint committees or commissions from its own membership, and to repeat the process as often as an occasion presents itself. Every new creation of the sort provides a fresh batch of offices to be filled.2

1 It is as follows:

"That hereafter no part of the public moneys, or of any appropriation heretofore or hereafter made by Congress, shall be used for the payment of compensation or expenses of any commission, council, board, or other similar body, or any members thereof, or for expenses in connection with any work or the results of any work or action of any commission, council, board, or other similar body, unless the creation of the same shall be or shall have been authorized by law, nor shall there be employed by detail, hereafter or heretofore made, or otherwise, personal services from any executive department or other government establishment in connection with any such commission, council, board, or other similar body." (Acts of 1909.)

2 During Senate debate on a proposal to appoint one of these commissions to investigate departmental methods, Mr. Dolliver remarked:

"We have had these business methods examined by joint commissions and special commissions and by special committees of both Houses of Congress within the last few years. The Dockery Commission spent months of time in the exact kind of research that is proposed here. More recently committees of the House on the expenditures in the various departments spent a good deal of time upon the same subject. In the later months of the last administration, a committee of experts chosen from the departments, known informally in Congress as the 'Keep Commission,' went through all their business methods and made such suggestions as seemed to them to be reasonable and desirable; and only a short time ago a joint commission selected from the Post-Office Committees of the two Houses with the aid of high-priced experts, overhauled all the business methods of the Post-Office Department and made