Carson City daily appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1907-1930, 1909-06-21
STORY OF FIGHT ON CANNON
RULES BY DEMOCRATS

| ldSlc felOrmer demanded. Ile min
Ority OF the House and individual
members (thanks to the Fitzgeral,
amendmentS) are now in stronger
position than ever before. With these
new advantages, however. comes new
responsibilities. Members will no
! longer be able to go home and plead
! that the Speaker held up thei.' bills
| They will have to offer tner bills fO1
! consideration in the House. and will
| be obliged to stand up in the light OF
| day and be counted. Thus. in my
! Judgment, many a hypocrire will be
unmasked.
! Now, as to the one exception to my
statement that the Fitzgerald amend
| mentS have secured all the reforms
| demanded in the rules. This is the
matter which caused the split in the
| Democratic ranks and the public has
| but hazy idea Of what caused The
quarrel, The issue was whether the
| Speaker should continue to nomn-
ate the membership OF the commit
tees Of the House OF Representatives
on the Republican side and the min
ority leader to nominate the Demo-
cratic members of the committees.
Certain of the refOrmers demanded
that this power should be taken away
from the Speaker. and the supporters
of the Fitzgerald amendments on the
other hand insisted that so far as the
minority leader was concerned, he
y. i l. ;
sponsibilities OF nominating his side
of the committees.
The fight over this question began
before the end OF the last Congress.
Both Mr.. Fitzgerald and | Went to the
minority leader ,Mr. CLARKE, and told
him that in our opinion the right to
nominate membership Of the commit
tees was his chief attribute Of leader.
ship. That tor his own sake as lead
er. and for the sake OF the Democrat
ic organization OF the House, he must
retain such a right. That if he gave
up the chief rights Of the leader. he
also gave up the chief powers; tlat
We thought it only fair that members
be able to fix the responsibility for
committee assignments, anl that the
minority leader should not remove
that responsibility off his own shoul
ders. either into the hands OF a steer
ing committee. or kitchen cabinet, or
OF the Democratic caucus. which am
ounted to tAe same thing. Upon that
we joined issue.
Now. what did Mr. Clark do? With
out consulting us further. and indeed
without consulting any OF the North
ern Democrats. before he had been
elected minority leader for the new
Congress. he attempted TO make
deal with certain dissatisfied Repub-
icans. called the insurgents, by
which a committee OF fifteen was to
be appointed. This committee was
to consist of five regular Republicans,
four republican insurgents, so-called,
and six Democrats They were not
to reform the rules now, while the
opportunity offered, but were to put
off such reform until next December
Our partisanS in this dispute urged
upon Mr.. Clark that if the Republican
insurgents were in earnest in lhcll
endeavor to help us to overthrow
Cannonism the way to do SO was to
vote for somebody other than Mr.
Cannon for Speaker and We would
assist them in such an effort. This
they refused to do. thereby showing
mat they We're not in earnest in the
matter. We argued that once Mr..
in, 20 f.1n id la
to talk of ovcrthrOWin2 Cannonism.
Now, what happened? The HOust
was to meet at - o'clock, noon. At
10 O'Clock the Democratic caucus was
assembled. Mr.. Clark was elected
minority leader, thereupon Mr.. I'm
derwood, of Alabama. took the floor,
announced that he would hold the
floor for an hour and would then
move the previous question:, ncea ling
to shut out any amendments to tit>
resolution which he offered. This
was as tyrannical as anything | nave
ever seen Speaker Cannon do. We
were helpless. Mr.. Underwood then
stated the purpose Of his resolution,
which was, as | have said, to elect
(really to appOinD a committee OF hi
teen to revise the rules next Decem-
Der. He did not give us the names
of that committee, and it was we'll he
did not, because an uproar would
have ensued. Although the North
had more than One-third of the Dem
ocratic representation in the House
only one Northern Democrat, Ne
braskan, was to be put upon that
committee of committees. Moreover
it would have at once become appar
ent that instead of striking while
the iron was hot and reforming the
rules now, it was proposed to put on
until next December doubtful re-
form, depending upon the votes OF
So called Republican insurgents. Dur
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