Mohave County miner. [volume] (Mineral Park, A.T. [Ariz.]) 1882-1918, 1906-08-18
CANNON AN ABSOLUTE RULER.
How the Functions of the Lower House of
Congress are Usurped by its Speaker.

Rumors of how the speaker rules
the lower house of Congress have been
frequent during the present year, with
its ever-increasing roll of important
legislation. In the following article,
contributed to the New York Times, a
Washington correspondent seeks to
show to just what extent this bossism
has extended:
The Fifty-ninth Congress has been
unique in its production of legislation
by the speaker against the wishes of
majority of the House. The despot-
ism of the machine is an old story, but
this session has out-Heroded Herod.
In times past it has dragooned
through occasional legislation, but
never before has there been a session
in which practically all the important
legislation was enacted in fat defiance
of the majority. When the railroad
rate rule was jammed through the
House, it marked the eliminating
point in the autocracy of Speaker Can
non and the House machine.
There has been much uninformed
talk about legislative usurpation,
about one-man power, about the Presi-
dents erecting himself into a czar.
How baseless it is has been shown in
the Presidents defeat on the question
of broad court review, after he had
put forth more strenuous efforts than
probably were ever made before by an
executive to obtain from Congress
what he wanted.
But there is one-man power in
Washington, and it is in the speakers
room. That officer wields more abso-
lutte, unfettered power than any other
in the world. But never before has a
speaker used this power consistently
throughout a session to enact legisla-
tion to which majority of the House
was violently opposed. 1t began with
the Statehood bill. which was favored
by so small a minority that its earnest
advocates could have been whitfield
down to the speaker himself and two
or three others. but which the protest
ing House was compelled to pass. IL
eliminated with the passage of the
railway-rate rule, to which a large
majority of the House was unquestion-
ably opposed.
If the people of the country really
understood what was going on in the
House of Representatives, it would be-
come great political issue. Instead.
it attracts little attention. What it
means is the abolition OF the House of
Representative as a legislative body.
The trainers of the government pro-
iected a system in which there should
be an executive branch, a judicial
branch, and two-chambered legisla-
tive branch. There is still a two
chambered legislative branch, but it
no longer consists of the Senate and
the House: it consists of the Senate
and the speaker. The House has been
reduced to absolute nonentity.
How this has come about is not gen.
orally understood. The founder of the
system, Thomas B. Reed, never con-
templated the lengths to which it has
gone. They are the evolution of the
system. The general supposition is
that the speaker, being a strong man,
rules the representatives, who are
weak men, by reason of his strength. |
That is not the fact.
Under our system of government, a |
representative does not take his seat
until thirteen months after he is elect |
ed. He goes to Washington with the |
nominating convention which will |
choose his successor perhaps eight or
nine months away. In those eight |
months he has to make good'' with |
his constituents, who are not inclined |
to be put off with excuses. He swells |
around for about a week after his ar
rival. counting on the great deeds he is |
going to do. Then his air-castles |
crash.
He finds that, under the rules of the |
House, his political life is in the hands |
of the machine-the speaker and the |
committee on rules. None of the bills |
which his constituents want passed I
has the ghost of chance unless he is
good. The machine, under the rules,
controls absolutely all the legislation
which is to be put through, and not