Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1902-05-01
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* - ular Cummings


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orator. Speaking of the rules of the
house, he said in part:
sit is with humiliation unspeakable
that l rise in my place on this floor and
admit to my constituents at home that
in this house l am utterly powerless
to bring any bill or measure, no matter
how worthy or meritorious it may be,
to vote unless / can first make terms
with the speaker
1T may be a matter of news to some
of the good people within the confines
of the American republic to know that
there is no way of getting an ordinary
unpriyieged measure considered and
voted upon in this house unless it suits
the speaker. / am aware that there are
several theoretical ways of getting a
measure up, but they have no actual
reality, no fruitage in fact | make the
statement ON this floor now that no
member of this body who introduces a
bill-not private bill, but public bill
can get it considered or brought for
ward for final determination unless it
suits the speaker, and if any one wants
to deny that statement / am in per
sonal position and in a peculiarly hap
by frame of mind right now to give a
little valuable testimony on that point.
Imagine, if you please, measure
not private measure, but public
measure-which has been considered at
length by a great committee of this
house and favorably reported with the
recommendation that it do pass. That
bill is then placed on the calendar
The calendar! That is misnomer. 1t
ought to be called a cemetery, for there
in lie the whitening bones of legisla-
tive hopes. When the bill is reported
and placed on the calendar, what does
the member who introduced it and who
is charged by his constituency to Sc
cure its passage do?
''Does he consult himself about his
desire to call it up? No. Does he con
suit the committee that considered the
bill and recommended it for passage?
No. Does he consult the will of the
majority of this house? No. What
does he do? l will tell you what he
does-he either consents that that bill
may die upon the calendar or he puts
his manhood and his individuality in
his pocket and goes trotting down that
little pathway of personal humiliation
that leads to where? To the speakers
room! Aye, the speakers room! All
the glories that clustered around the
holy of holies in King Solomon's tenn
pie looked like 30 cents-yes, looked
like % cents-compared with that job
bing department of this government
li'Then you are in the presence of real
leatness. What then? Why, the
Ieaker looks over your bill, and then
he tefis you whether he thinks it ought
to come up or not.
'The question that now arises to
confront us is, Have we put a club in
the hands of some one else to beat us
to death? Have we elevated one man
on a pinnacle so high that he cannot
now see those who elevated him? Is
ll1C SDcdheI llllS IOuSC IL ulcEc
tai man of common flesh and clay or
is he supernatural and immortal? What
miracle was wrought at his birth? Did
a star shoot from its orbit when he was
born, or did he come into existence in
the good old fashioned way that ush-
cred the rest of US into this vale of
tears?
''Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow
world
Like Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their
fates;
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves that we are underlings.
*
"A Free LiIIiputian Show
''We operate here under set of rules
eonfessedly designed to belittle the
hopes and dwarf the ambitions of the
individual members of this body while
that same set of rules vests more power
in the hands of two or three men than
was ever enjoyed by an oriental despot
or ten button mandarin.
Here we sit like lot of human midg-
cts and legislative lilliputians trying
to do business under a set of rules es-
pecially designed to dwarf the power
and dim the hopes of the vast majority
of the members of this body while the
same set Of rules, on the other hand
is intended to swell the power and en-
lo 4Io inf of Il
yond the point that it was ever intend.
ed that the influence of any one man
should go in free legislative body.
''The system is rotten at both ends.
It is rotten at one end because it robs
the individual members in this house
Of the power that the constitution of
his country and the credentials Of his
people entitle him to; it is rotten at the
other end because it vests power in
other men that they have no right to
and ofttimes places on them duties they
have no capacity to fulfill
"Mr. Chairman, there are people in
Washington city today who are going
down to a theater and paying out so
cents each of lawful money of the Unit
ed States of America, of present stand
ard weight and fneness, in order to see
what? In order to see a performance
of lilliputians. Great God, what a sin
full waste of money. when they can
come up here and watch this house per-
form six days in the week for nothingi
81 am not now making war on the
Republican party, but / am making
war on the methods and the men of
that little clique who are laboring un-
der the mistaken idea that they are the
Republican party.
'.Who are they? You might think
from the power they assume that each
one had been born with a scepter in his
hand and a halo round his head to dis
tinguish him from the ordinary con
gressional scrub.
''On the contrary, they feed on the
same kind of meat and are made of
the same kind of clay as the rest Of
u.s. and pretty common brand of mud
it is too.
.'These few remarks of mine may
never be published as a campaign doc
ument by any political party. l shall
be satisfied if they pass down to pos
terity in the form of a Sunday school
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