Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1893-12-02

houses shall be engrosSed in printed form
to receive the signatures of the presiding
officers and the final signature of the Pres
ident. The innovation takes effect at the
beginning of the regular session of Congress
in December.
since the beginning of the government bills
have been enrolled and engrossed with the
pen. The enrolling has been done on long
sheets of heavy paper-the engrossing on
parchment. Now the bills will be printed
on paper and afterward on parchment.
This change marks era in the history
OF Congress. 1t is the first prominent mile
stone on the road to the modernization of
congressional methods.
In the matter of engrossing or enrolling
the bills of Congress speed was not so i'm
portant a consideration as accuracy; and
some OF the costly mistakes made by the
clerks OF both House and Senate In copy
ing bills have taught Congress the wisdom
or changing the form Of this work. or
course, the proof reader of the government
printing office is not infallible; but there is
much less likelihood of mistakes in a print
ed document which has been read in the
proof two or three times than in a hand
written document which has gone through
one revision. Especially is this true of the
bills which come up for consideration in the
last hours of Congress, when the clerks are
worn with much labor and their eyes are
heavy for want of sleep. 1t is altogether
likely that the government printing office
will not be called on to do the work of
printing these bills. 1t is probable that a
set of presses will be put in the Capitol or
in building not far away, and that the
printing of the bills will be done within
easy reach of the members of both houses
and of the clerks.
An Immense Amount of Work.
In the early days of a congressional ses-
sion the enrolment of bills is a safe and
easy matter. The enrolling clerks have
very little to do. They have time to revise
and reread bill often may seem ne
cessary to insure accuracy But in the last
days of the session the work Of enrolling is
more than two or three men can handle.
The other clerks in the office always
called in to assist with the work of copying
and of reading for corrections. Most of the
clerks have been working night and day.
They are too much exhausted to take any
lively interest in what they are doing. AS
a result mistakes creep into important bills
and are perpetuated in the laws of the
country by the signature of the President
of the United States. Often the mistake is
one of commission, as often one of omis-
sion. One of the most important para
graphs in the Mckinley tarifr law Cthe to-
bacco paragraph} was omitted by a mistake
of the enrolling clerk. The mistake was
not discovered and the bill received the sig
nature of the President and became a law
in this imperfect form. An attempt was
made to have the entire law declared I'M
constitutional on account OF this omission.
But the Supreme Court held that 1t could
not go behind the signature of the PreSi-
dent. The law as filed in the State Depart
ment, said the court, was the law
Hundreds of mistakes made by the clerks
Of Congress could be pointed out in exist
ing laws. Some of them have cost the gov
eminent many millions. These are the mis-
takes made in tariff laws. The omission of
a punctuation mark in a tariff law will
change the whole meaning of a paragraph.
One of the most celebrated examples of this
was the fruit paragraph in the tariff law
of 1872. The bill as passed provided that
fruit plants should be admitted free.
The clerks were probably copying the bill
together-one reading and the other writing
and the paragraph as engrossed provided
that fruit. plants should be admitted free.
The substitution of the comma for the n.y.
phen put tropical and semi-tropical fruit on
the free list. when 1t was intended that only
tropical and semi-tropical fruit plants
should be on the list. A sharp lawyer saw
the flaw, went among the fruit importers
and got authority from them to bring suit
and the government had to repay to these
importers more than half a million dollars,
Of which fully one-half went to the at
torney.
Dfmcu1tfes That May Arise.
1t is not so bad when mistakes Of this
character are made in the early days Of a
session and are discovered before the law
has been enforced or before much damage
has been done A bill correcting the error
can be introduced, pushed through both
houses and sent to the President very
quickly. But in the last hours of a Congress
a mistake like this may be very serious
matter. If the mistake is discovered before
Congress adjourns there may be time in
which to correct it. If 1t is discovered after
Congress has adjourned II may be too late
to correct 1t at all. The next House of
Representatives may be of a different po-
litical complexion from the one which has
just adjourned sine die; there may be an
other President; even the Senate may have
changed color, as 1T did last spring. Any
thing of a partisan flavor which failed to
pass the F'ifty-ffrst Congress, when the
publicans had both branches of the legisla-
tive as well as the executive end of the
government, stood no show of passing the
Fifty-secOnd Congress- in which the House
OF Representatives was overwhelmingly
democratic.
The longest bill ever copied by the Senate
enrolling clerks was the Mckinley tariff
bill. AS it passed the House 1t filled sixty
seven printed pages-for the bills as they
pass are printed in duplicate for the use of
members and Senators. The Senate amenu-
ments to the tariff bill filled 162 pages and
contained about 10000 words. The bill was
Congress. If the clerks had had to copy
all of it after its passage they would not
have finished the work in time for the bill
to go to the President for his signature be-
fore adjournment. They copied a great deal
of it in advance of it's passage, using their
judgment about the parts which would
probably go through without change. This
is an Old trick of the enrolling clerks At
the end of a session of Congress the enroll
ing clerks always have on hand a number
of bills which were expected to pass and
which We're copied in that expectation, but
which failed of final action. The same
policy will undoubtedly be followed with the
printed bills. The printer will be asked to
print a great many bills, leaving the date
of the passage a blank. This blank can be
filed in when the bill is passed and the
print on parchment can be run off and sent
to the presiding officers of the two houses
for signature within ten minutes after the
bill is passed. Or. if 1t is the last day of
the session, the date can be filled in anyway,
and if the bill passes the Vice President can
afhX his signature to it the moment after
the affirmative action of the Senate is taken
and the Speaker of the House can affix his
a minute later. Three minutes after its
passage it can be in the hands of the Presi-
dent, sitting in the red room of the Senate
wing of the Capitol on the last day of the
session every arrangement is made TO rail
road business. The passageway' between
the Senate and House wings of the Capitol
is kept clear by a line of watchmen. and the
clerks fly back and forth at break-neck
speed. When the methods of the House ard
Senate are thoroughly niodCrniZed we may
see the messages Of the Senate 70 the House