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America than are those of any ten members of the present House of Representatives, and their retention in the public life of their countries is regarded as a national obligation. Congress offers no such career to an American.

DEVOTION TO LOCAL, NOT NATIONAL INTERESTS

THIS

HIS situation further exaggerates the inherent localism of our representative system. There is little chance to make a national reputation, and it would not be worth much if made. Districts are likely to resent rather than to reward their representatives for devotion to national affairs. Moreover, the attainment of high committee place, where alone such service is possible, depends little on tested national leadership, and almost wholly on long local survival in one's home district. A member might get on the Judiciary Committee, for instance, because he had been known as a lawyer or judge, and finally become chairman of it by keeping the peace of rival factions and ambitions longer than do his colleagues. And then he might in turn be ousted, as many have been, by some local booster, on the platform of running local errands and not wasting time improving the judicial system of the United States. If a disgruntled district retires a McKinley, for instance, there is no way for any other district, or for the national party organization, to do anything about it. Other nations have a remedy, and our laws theoretically provide for it, also, but our incorrigible localism has always prevented its use.

This adds further to the degeneration of debate. There is little inducement, even if the rules of the House of Representatives were not made chiefly to obstruct it, to make a serious speech on a matter which is already decided and on which votes could not be changed by argument. Members will not listen, the papers will not print it, and the people would not be interested if they did. The real pressure is to get the debate out of the way, to make room for the multitude of local or special-interest private bills, in one or

another of which each member's constituents are chiefly interested. Even in the time set aside for formal debate on major measures, the pressure for "recognition" is to make (or print) speeches for distribution at home, as campaign documents.

The whole conflict of localism against nationalism, which is the bane of our legislative bodies, tends to repress debate, to decrease its quality, and to press consideration from the floor back to the committee. The very press of business makes much of this inevitable. Unless things are done in committee, most of them could not be done at all. But not all of this press is necessary. press is necessary. Congress does too much. much. It has invaded functions which in all other governments are executive, and which could be better done by the highly staffed executive departments. Congress has not dared delegate the necessary powers to the executive department because they were irresponsible for the exercise of that power when granted.

With the heads of those departments regularly present and subject to question on the floor, there would be no reason for this hesitation. Even the committees could have a more finally delegated power, over the things on which they are in practice nearly final now. This would get the minor business done, even more efficiently than now, and would leave time for real consideration and debate of major measures on the floor. A proper organization of the now-recognized leadership would make debate physically possible, even in a numerous body like the House of Representatives. This has been accomplished in even larger chambers.

How could the mere presence and participation of Cabinet members bring all this about?

It would bring debate immediately out of secret committees into the public forum. Whatever a Cabinet officer says is heard and printed. Whatever is said in reply, in explanation, in defense, or in alternative suggestions has some of the same interest attached. The fact that the administration policy, or prestige, is involved adds the sporting interest. The debate will be before the national

audience, and reputations made in it will be nationally worth while. It will even penetrate the home communities, and lessen the pressure to deliver mere local campaign documents. Leaders will prefer, in parceling out time, those who can contribute something to the result. This is what occurs in other countries.

There would not be the temptation to "ear mark" appropriations beyond the limit of efficiency.

Much futile debate, inquiry, and investigation would disappear. A vast lot of time and agitation is now wasted on things that never happened. A simple statement of fact, by the department head concerned, would often clear up the matter in two minutes.

This would activate leadership in Congress itself. An incompetent or dissenting committee chairman, holding by mere seniority, would spectacularly fizzle, and some one would assume his leadership by title of competency. Such a member could become as big a man at home as he had grown to be in Washington. Districts would be proud, instead of resentful, of a representative to whom other districts looked up. Or, if an individual district were in disagreement with a bril

It would be somebody's business to be responsible for the major bills and a related policy. It would be the business of the Opposition to meet the challenge of offering an alternative positive policy, for which it would be willing to be responsible. Party associates of Administration, if they wished to cavil, to amend or improve, would have to give reasons for their changes. If it developed that

liant representative, it would not be beyond hope that some other district, in agreement on policy, would take advantage of its constitutional privilege to choose him for its representative. In this practice consists the salvation of Parliamentary leadership in Britain.

Unquestionably, the quality of legislation would be improved. The reputation of an administration would depend on the careful preparation as well as on the policy of its bills. They would represent a related plan. Not only could expert staffs draw technically better bills, but also the department head would dare introduce bills leaving administrative detail to administrative officers. If he does that now, before a committee, he is turned down. But before Congress he would have the advantages of publicity and of the argument: "You have me here now, to hold me responsible for what is done."

the

an Administration measure was crude and half-considered, so much the worse for the Cabinet head concerned, and so much the better for the committee chairman or sub-chairman who remedied the defect. He would be in line for a Cabinet position himself, perhaps not much later.

The mass of private bills could be lumped for reference to administrative departments as well as to Congressional committees. With the aloofness gone, expert reports would no longer have to be regarded with suspicion and hostility. Staffs and committees, in fact, could cooperate. The Postmaster-General could ask for a public buildings bill for the buildings he really needs, without paying the pork-barrel price of distributing other buildings among enough districts to produce the necessary votes. Neither the Postmaster-General nor the committee can stand against that pressure under the

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present system. Very important and much needed public building plans, which would save a great deal of money, are now being held up, for this reason.

REMOVE THIS STRAIT-JACKET! ADMINISTRATION, the improve

partments work in strait-jackets now. They are wound in red tape and held to minute statutory regulations designed to deprive them of the discretion on which efficiency depends. Often they are reduced to subterfuges to operate at all. An office full of clerks working on one job

will be drawing pay for work ostensibly

done on other jobs. These regulations may be legitimate, and are certainly inevitable, under the system of aloofness and mutual irresponsibility. They could not long survive a plain statement on the floor from the department head, showing the cost and undertaking to be personally responsible for the exercise of the discretion requested, and to be ready to answer questions regularly in Congress on it. The last excuse for the statutory straitjacket would disappear.

The shocking undermanning of the expert staffs of Congress would be remedied. The abundant staffs of the departments could be used coöperatively, instead of burdensomely, as now. Requests from Congress for information now overload staffs, to the detriment of their regular work, to collate facts nine tenths of which are commonly useless. If, instead, the Cabinet officer were asked the question personally in Congress, he could frequently answer it off-hand, or after a day's delay; or he could get the necessary investigation done efficiently and give the digested answer uncluttered with incidental lumber. This would save administrative waste and add enormously to the intelligence of Congressional legislation.

The Cabinet itself would acquire unity and a more carefully chosen personnel. As pointed out in the previous article, the Cabinet does not now have to be in agreement, and rarely is. It does not even have to consult. But if it represented the Administration on the floor, it would have

to agree first. No member could be advocating something which another, or all the others and the President, opposed. Members could not lobby and intrigue against each other for extra appropriations and pet measures if they had to do it out loud and visibly. The very process of

consultative body, a real privy council. Its members would be chosen originally for harmony, and if one of them afterward found himself in disagreement, he would yield or resign.

‘A MAN IS KNOWN BY HIS friends" T WOULD also have a marked selective

Wect on the personnel of the Cabinet itself. No President would dare appoint unsuitable or uncongenial persons, to meet some obligation or placate some interest, if he had to be represented in Congress by them. gress by them. What President would have put Bryan in so misfit a place as Secretary of State, or, appointing a Lansing, have failed to take him into his confidence, if the appointee were his spokesman? Or how long would a Daugherty or a Fall have survived constant Congressional and public scrutiny?

To this it has been replied that the selection would operate adversely also. A President would be deprived of the services of excellent administrators who are not well-adapted to the wrangle of Congressional debate, and reduced to men of the "talking type." The pet example is Secretary Mellon, or, sometimes, Secretary Hoover, confessedly the outstanding business administrators of the present Cabinet. Hoover, though a good speaker and a ready and resourceful debater, has not a strong carrying voice, and might not be heard; while Mellon, it is said, is a business man who would be no match for Congressional demagogues and smartAlecks at their own game.

Consider these two examples. Hoover's only disadvantage, an unresonant voice, is now removed by the invention of the microphone amplifier. With its aid, he could give a most excellent account of himself, even in the noisiest debate. And the chances are that Mellon, by the quiet

marshaling of facts, would soon shame the demagogue phrase-maker and the smart heckler into discomfited silence. Or, if Mellon could not, then some other great business administrator who was also a good debater would have been chosen. There are such men.

At any rate, the President, not being confined to Congress for his selections nor obligated to placate its factions, would not have all the embarrassments of a British Premier, caricatured by Dickens in "Bleak House." Says Lord Boodle to Sir Leicester Dedlock:

The limited choice of the Crown, in the formation of a new Ministry, would lie between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodlesupposing it to be impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle, what are you to do with Noodle? You can't offer him the Presidency of the Council; that is reserved for Poodle. You can't put him in the Woods and Forests: that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces, because you can't provide for Noodle!

It is also likely that a sort of responsibility to Congress would develop-responsibility, not of the Cabinet, but of the individual member. This does not mean that he would resign if he properly represented the President's policy and Congress disagreed. That is not our system. But if he represented it inadequately, and the defeat was obviously due to his failure of leadership, he would not find his position tenable after many such experiences.

The opportunity for Congressional leadership would open, in the prospect of Cabinet appointment, a career as a reward for Congressional success. If a President requires as Cabinet members those who can handle themselves effectively on the floor of Congress, he will be likely to make at least part of his appointments from those who have already demonstrated that capacity as members of Congress.

And from these Cabinet members, occasionally a President would emerge.

This would not necessarily lead to a Congressional Cabinet, under the Parliamentary system. An editorial in this magazine last December pointed out a way in which something resembling this could be done, even without a constitutional amendment, by giving the formal appointment as "Secretary" to the permanent Under-Secretary, but instructing him to take the orders of a designated Congressional leader. That, however, is a step outside the present proposal, and there is no present indication that Congress would desire it. Much more likely would be the appointment of some members of Congress who were willing to resign, and of some other persons, not in Congress.

But certainly the prospect of visible leadership and fame as a member of Congress, with the possibility of a Cabinet appointment as a sequel, would offer a career in Congress which should attract strong men to it.

To the people would come the boon of visible government-the thing we have always cried for and never got. And the Federal example would perhaps inspire a similar reform in state governments, where it is even more acutely needed.

MR. SECRETARY, I WANT TO KNOW-"

PERHAPS even more important than

the right of Cabinet ministers to speak in Congress is their duty of answering questions or "interpellation." This is the most conspicuous omission in our mechanism of government.

The importance of some form of interpellation is primarily in the control which it gives Congress over administration. But it is also the ideal short-cut method of getting information, and is a valuable safety-valve for a multitude of complaints and misunderstandings. It also gives the Cabinet officer opportunity to say things on which he must now often keep silent. Even on foreign relations, the Secretary of State could say things in the Senate, in response to a question, which it would be indiscreet for him to volunteer

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as a public announcement under the existing system. The fact that the Foreign Ministers of other nations are constantly required to do this in their own parliaments would stop their mouths against complaining of it here.

Interpellation takes various forms in different countries. In England it is In England it is called the "question," and is carefully hedged about with safeguards. The Minister addressed need not reply at once. Normally he takes a day to investigate, and then, on routine matters, merely reads a formal reply prepared by some subordinate. The "question" must be really a question, and not an argument or a statement, and there is a committee to reduce it to question form before submission. There can be no heckling, general debate, or motion. The author of the question may ask another arising directly out of it, and may make one speech, but no one else may speak and no motion is in order. There is one hour each day for questions, and any not reached in that time are printed with their written answers in the proceedings. The question," therefore, cannot be used to put the Government to a test of confidence or to risk its tenure.

The French system is the exact opposite. Any member may put whatever he regards as a question; there is full debate and often excited interchange between Ministers and Deputies; and at the close of the interpellation the routine motion to "pass to the order of the day" may be "motivated" with an expression of confidence, criticism, or condemnation of the Government. If it passes in hostile form, the Government at once resigns, and there is no appeal to the people. Doubtless American sense of propriety would prefer something resembling the British safeguards. However, even the French system, if it should ever develop here, would be less pernicious than it is in France. Since our Cabinet officers would not have to resign, there would be no risk of anything worse than annoyance and bad taste. But let no Congressman advocate the system for America in gleeful

anticipation of making a French scene with some Cabinet officer. American dignity will prevent that.

THE

DOES CONGRESS DISAGREE?

HIS is no new proposal. It was, as we have seen, Washington's conception of the original intent of the framers of the Constitution themselves. It has at least twice been reported favorably by committees of the Senate and of the House of Representatives. Only three years ago it seemed almost on the point of adoption, and then, as is the way of permanent and fundamental things, it was swamped in the press of immediate tasks.

It has been favored by every President since Roosevelt. Chief Justice Taft and Secretary Hughes have constantly advocated it. It has been moved for adoption in state constitutions by men as conservative as Elihu Root and as radical as W. S. U'Ren. It was in the Confederate Constitution. With only one exception, every member of the last three Cabinets who was interviewed favored it, and several of them are among its most pronounced proponents. And it is now a definite practical emergency, on account of the budget system, which will become either undemocratic or inefficient without it.

There is nothing against it but tradition and inertia. The tradition has become meaningless and the inertia can be overcome by a popular campaign of education. It was, of course, out of the question to expect the recent "lame duck" session of Congress to do anything, and it would scarce have been worth while. But if Congressmen and their constituents, newspapers and their readers, and publicspirited and thoughtful citizens everywhere will begin to take stock of the real state of Congress, and will consider what to do about it, it is easily possible that the time may prove ripe for action at the coming session. Certainly it would be a memorable achievement for the SixtyNinth Congress and the Coolidge Administration.