The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1908-02-13

q
in more normal times il would have 80
| or 40 or so broad pages.
OF course. no one ever undertakes to
read the publication paragraph by
paragraph and page by page. and so the
world may not be losing IL great amount
of intelligence about Congress. There
! is one good side to il. in that the typos
down at the Government Printing Of
| flee do not have to work so long or so
hard in bringing the Record ont in time
| for the few Thousand official readers in
Washington before breakfast The Gov
ernment's bill for white paper will be
| less. there will be more money in the
| United States Treasury at the close of
the fiscal year, and incidentally a few
acres of spruce forest will be saved
temporarily from destruction or devas-
tation.
1t is all on account of the very re-
Stricted output of hot air" There
/ have not been many gags upon Repre-
sentatives at this session of Congress.
Over in the Senate, where cloture is as
| much stranger as though it lived and
moved and had its being on the planet
Mars, the output of hot air. has also
been remarkably small. The nimble-
fingered official reporters of debates
have simply loafed around half of the
| time, hardly earning their salt, altho
the Government pays each and every
one of them at least $1,000 a year for
an average of about six months work
annually, because they are very nimble-
| fingered, and can make pothooks on
the pages of notebook with the light
ning-like rapidity that defies the ora
| tors of swiftest tongues
] The long and short of it seems to be
that the gumption has departed from
all the long-distance speakers. Few
l Zy,11 - @DIJ ok ut ncfEs
| sions of Congress a large number Of
the 30 Senators and 391 Representatives
are bursting with something to say, and,
| like hen that is about to lay an egg,
do not feel easy till the speech is be-
fore the public. There are half a hun
dred topics that Congress is willing to
| talk about. The task almost invariably
| is to shut them off and keep the time
of Congress for the consideration of
| things that must be considered. Now
| it looks very much as if it might be-
come necessary to prod the Congress
men to talk. 1t would certainly be re-
mark:sble if things should come to such
q pass.
But unless there is a picking up the
Congressional Record of the first ses-
sion of the 60th Congress can be bound
into octave sets of four or five leather
more than that. There were IL of those
big volumes of the Record two years
ago that would make a pile of en-
| balmed talk two feet high, and Con-
gress did not stay in session very later
either. But that was possibly the eli
| max, for the quantity of embalmed talk
had been constantly increasing bien-
nially. The short session of a Congress
has such a brief period of life that
there has tn ha a n1dyjrpJ1m of action
and a minimum of speech. All of
which may be a very small thing to a
lot of people, but heavier or a lighter
burden to the Government employees,
who. along in the Summer, take the
bundles Of books around to a few hum
dred Offices and Bureaus in Washing
ton and in thousands of packages to
the post Office to load down the mails
to many far-distant towns and cities.
The Congressman that Shoots off his
mouth simply has not been busy this
season., That is why there has been
such shortage of talk. The big lead
ers of the Senate and the big leaders
of the House do not use much space
on the printed page during session.
Speaker Cannon almost never makes a
speech in the House. He figures in the
Record with q lot of small talk and
emphatic ordinations. such as the
House must come to order" Gentlemen
will please be seated" There is so
much confusion in the hall that the
chair cannot hear" and SO on thru a
long list. He takes UP some space
occasionally in rendering decisions, but
these for an entire session might not
amount to as many words as trained
orator could speak in an hour, if ne
were in fine fettle. Chairman Tawney,
of the House Appropriations Commit
tee, makes considerable talk during a
session, but it is strictly in the line of
legitimate MISUNDERSTANDING appro-
priation bills or defending items from
attack. and so on. Mr.. Tawney, be it
remembered, Is the most important
member of the House, next to the
Speaker, and if anybody might be ex-
pected to talk it would be this first lieu
tenant. On the other hand, it is gen.
orally the new or unimportant member
from Bingville who fills the air Of the
House with words, and kills time with
half igested ideas of no interest 20 any
intelligent constituency
And then the Senate, Who ever heard
of Senators Allison. Hale or Aldrich
troubling the Senate with too much
talk? The trouble is they will not talk
as much as the Senate and the country
would like to hear them, altho a lot of
new Senator's, in normal session, want
to keep in oratorical action half of the
Senate's time.
Possibly the era of cheap talk in Con-
gress is passing out to a degree. There
is less disposition nowadays to talk
about trifles or to get into sham ora
torical Journeys. The people are be-
coming wiser to such things. and there
is less disposition to allow Congression-
al orators to appeal to partisan preju-
dices or to deceive by artfully- built
paragraphs. The newspapers keep a
very great army of readers more or less
well Informed, and when some cheap
bit of politics is put forth 1t is only a
question of time when some writer will
puncture it.
The thinking Senators and thinking
members will have something to say
before the session is over. Speeches
which are the result of study and ma
tured deliberatiOn still have a very i'm
portant part in legislation. Currency,
appropriations and politics furnish a
number of important topics this year,
but the best men of Congress have been
bordering over them, and do not want
to speak till it is opportune. By-and-by
Representative Littlefeld, one of the
most rapid takers of the House, and
also one of the closest thinkers, may put
half dozen pages of words into the
Congressional Record some afternoon
without half trying. There are plenty
of other rapid takers and slow takers,