Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-04-29

talties have united to subject our Government to
the severest possible test to determine whether
not 1t would be durable structure.
The House of Representatives chosen by the di-
rect vote OF the people, has lost immensely in the
estimation OF thinking men in comparison with the
Senate, elected by the State Legislatures. 1t has
shown IN recent years a striking disability to pre-
serve its independence of utterance and action
| would not speak unexpectedly of the House of
Representatives; but under the Reed Rules as
they are called that body, gagged and manacled is
powerless in measure, and its members can speak
and vote only under restrictions and limitations
that almost pitable as far freedom of thought
and independence OF action go. The Committee
on Rules dictates everything, limits debate
pelS a vote, allows no amendment when it wills,
and is an effective piece OF machinery to place the
control OF the House in the hands of the Speaker
and his half-dozen leutenants. To use the language
OF OF a witty correspondent you hear the clanking
of chains when the puppets dance
This has caused the House to lose its distinctive
characteristic a deliberative assemblage, and it
IS only on rare occasions that there is permitted any
freedom of debate or clashing of mind against mind
that marked its sittings in the past. The result
is that the House is rapidly losing caste even among
its members and it no longer yields the nfir-
ence in the affairs of the Government which it once
did, and for the loss of which it alone is responsible
In the Senate, the other hand, there has always
obtained unlimited freedom of debate. There is
absolute equality of opportunity for any and every
member to show the best that is in him. In the
Senate there is full elaboration, and though
matters OF legislation carefully considered and
almost always licked into shape in the committees
it is only when the measure is a party that the
discussions in the Senate do not to illuminate
the question and produce that wise and salutary
legislation which come only from perfect free
dom of discussion and clash of mind against mind
in trying to reach a solution. The change which
has been wrought in the House causes that body to
register the will of few rather than its own
deberative judgment, and its legislation has more
and more of recent years been controlled largely
influenced by the executive. The Presidents
power lies in the patronage which he controls in
the thousands of offices he has to fill
House Represents Corporations
THE great corporations and business interests rep
resented in the banks and manufacturing indus
tries have of late years grown to have commanding
come to represent these rather than the masses of
the people. This is true, because these influences
have exercised controlling power in party con-
ventions and have year by year increased the num-
Der of representatives who but tools in the hands
of these elements of national life. While the
Senate has not escaped these same influences, and
in large degree represents them the House does,
the two bodies are wholly dssimilar in many
spects, and comparison of their methods and work
is altogether to the Senates credit.
There have been some sad and dishonoring events
which will be chronic1ed by future historians
marking the decay and degeneracy of the Senate
in these first years of the twentieth century Sena
tors have been charged with unlawful and
less dishonest acts, and two of them have been
victed in the courts of crimes which brought shame
and disgrace to themselves and humiliation and
regret to every member of the body. Others stand
pilloried in the public gaze unworthy and unfit