The Daily Missoulian. [volume] (Missoula, Mont.) 1904-1961, 1913-04-07
TREND OF HOUSE LEADERSHIP
HAS BEEN AND WILL NOW
BE REACTlONARY
E|GHT-H0UR LAW BALKED
Speaker Clark and Representative
Ben johnson Kill Measure Reducing
Iumbia-Former Governor AIdrich
Joins Progressive Party.


The reactionary trend of the RESPONSE
bic democratic leadership in the house
is one of the factors in the legislative
situation which is not fully understood
by those who have taken it for grant
ed that the senate is the reactionary
end of congress and that the house
is progressive.
Backward as is a large part of the
senate organization, it is a safe pre-
diction that when it comes to passing
laws in the interest of progress in the
Sixty second congress it will be found
that progressive measures have a
fairer chance for consideration in the
upper house than in the house of rep
resentatives
Because the house has INDUCED in
lot of sound and fury over various in
vestigations and kicked up a vast
amount of dust many have come to the
conclusion that the house is extremely
radical. AS a matter of fact the house
has INDUCED a great deal in the
practice of putting through measures
in spectacular fashion, knowing they
We're going to fail in the senate.
One of the best indications of the
real sentiments of the house leader
ship is seen in the record of the
house committee on the District of
Columbia and of the house itself on
legislation for the district. Much of
the legislation proposed for the dis
trict in the last congress was of far
more than local Importance.
Labor Laws Baked.
A shining instance of the disposition
of the house leadership is seen in what
happened to the eight-hOur bill for
women and girls in the District of
Columbia. This bill passed the senate.
1t was ballled in the house, through
opposition both from Representative
Ben Johnson of Kentucky, chairman
of the house district committee, and
from Speaker Clark. The need of
such legislation in the national capital
is great, but it was well understood
by the enemies of the bill that it had
an Importance far outreaching the
confines of the district. Had such
measure passed, it would have given
tremendous impetus to eight-hour
legislation all over the country and
to a general eight-hour bill in con-
gress. If Speaker Clark and Mr.. I'm
ueIWOOu, CudlI IIldH OI lllS ways anu
means committee and leader of the
democrats, had favored such legisla
ton, 1t would have been comparatively
easy for them, either to bring Mr.,
johnson to terms or to override him
both in his committee and in the
house, and put the bill through.
The house leadership, through
Chairman Johnson, sought to block
legislation to break up a great merger
of the public utility corporations in
Washington, likewise to block public
utility commission legislation and to
try to prevent needed reforms in the
liquor laws for the distributions
having no relation to prohibition. Had
it not been that amendments touching
these things were attached to the dis
trict appropriation bill in the senate,
nothing would have been done. AS it
was, the house leadership was out
generated and beaten.
1t is in dealing with such questions
as these that the true temper of the
house management has been shown.
1t refused to let the tobacco trust de-
cree be reopened, or to force the car
rying of the power trust decree of re-
OF ganization to the supreme court.
Only to the extent that progressive
democrats and other progressive ele-
ments break from under the thumb Of
the responsible house leadership may
anything of forward looking sort be
expected.