at the beginning in the interest of the machine.

But early in the career of a bill the caucus takes hold if necessary. Its power may be indicated in the following statement by a close student of the subject:

"The greatest fallacy of all is the contention that the caucus sometimes is used to promote good legislation. The caucus in its influence is always obstructive, and never constructive. Not once in the last Congress did the caucus contribute the deciding factor of strength to secure the passage of a measure. On the other hand, it was employed repeatedly to shield and mantle with vague, shifting irresponsibility the obstructive tactics of so-called leaders." (Lynn Haines, "Your Congress," p. 76.)

"Yet the majority party caucus, an unofficial institution, essentially secret, its meetings held behind barred and bolted doors; with no record of the debate, not even a sound escaping; with no assured integrity of the meager records it does keep; with absolutely no power to prevent dodging or the manipulation of quorums; with its portals ever open to pork-barrel bargainers, and all the underground influences of politics; with rarely more than a fourth of the whole membership of the House doing the deciding, has often usurped the official functions of the House itself." (Ibid, p. 77.)

The Rules Committee through its absolute power operates the machine and keeps it going producing models on the same pattern.1 Changes are abhorred.

With only two or three exceptions, they keep no calendars. At present there is chaos in this direction. Members themselves have to take hours and days if they want to investigate bills along any certain line." (Lynn Haines, "Your Congress," p. 102.)

i"During the Sixty-Third Congress, after this assurance that the Committee on Rules would play fair with the independent, anti-machine members, and that it could be depended upon to do what the House had no power to compel, sixty-eight different

The status quo is maintained. The caucus prepares the plan and the Rules Committee carries it into effect.

The net result of the system as affecting all kinds of bills is lack of both adequate and public consideration of law-making.

The present organization of Congress is designed to promote neither adequate consideration nor public discussion of bills. The system is controlled and maintained by pork. The remedy for the pork-barrel is indicated fully in the second chapter on the pork-barrel (Chapter X). But the "machine control" of the legislature is built into the legislative organization through the standing committee organization and the peculiar powers given to the Committee on Rules and to the cauSo far as standing committee organization is responsible for lack of consideration of budget proposals, the remedy described elsewhere (p. 135) is found in a thoroughgoing committee of the whole procedure. But in so far as the change to a committee of the whole procedure is not now possible, the remedy is to be found in rules reform.

cus.

The principal changes required in the rules of the legislature that are fairly described by this section of the discussion may be summarized as follows:

1. Meetings of standing committees should be public.

amendments to the rules were introduced. Congress closed with sixty-seven of them still buried in the Rules Committee. The only proposal acted upon was one offered by Mr. Henry himself (H. R. No. 104), which involved only the creation of a new standing committee on roads." (Lynn Haines, "Your Congress, pp. 93-94.)

2. Reports of standing committees should contain. roll call of members on each bill.

3. Committees should report to the legislature each week the status of all business before it.

4. Committees should publish calendars of meetings at least a week in advance of the meeting.

5. Committees should report all bills submitted to them in a definite limited time-finance bills might very properly have a little longer time than other bills or secure time from the House for further consideration.

CHAPTER VIII

LEGISLATIVE CONSIDERATION OF THE BUDGET

If legislation by representatives is a failure — and a failure due to the inherent character of the system then we ought to recognize the fact and attempt to devise other means to secure the desirable results that we hoped would flow from the present system. Some people do believe that the representative system has broken down completely and urge the substitution therefore of a small commission of legislative experts. With that proposal we have little patience, and the unlikelihood of its being accepted in any case in the near future does not warrant a digression. Other people would undermine the representative system insidiously by the so-called executive budget.

I. ARE LEGISLATURES A FAILURE?

The issue thus raised will be settled ultimately by the character of the legislative discussion of the budget proposals. That legislative discussion is occasionally a farce and may be frequently a waste of time, no one doubts. But that present American legislative organization or legislative procedure is directed to securing genuine discussion - pertinent discussion — adequate discussion public discussion of budget proposals, may be safely denied.

Newspapers have frequently described the perfunctory character of legislative discussion of important projects. The orgy of the last night has been characterized in the best style of the newspaperman. How disgraceful the legislative consideration may be sometimes, overriding even existing means to prevent abuse, is shown in an article by ex-Governor Hodges of Kansas describing some "doings" of a Kansas legislature. The ex-Governor says:

“The bulk reading of omnibus appropriation bills totaling $1,318,779 was the only vaudeville feature of the day!' So said the Topeka State Journal — the official state paper of Kansas in its account of the doings of the Kansas Legisla

ture.

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With a dozen members reading and singing a dozen different appropriation bills at one and the same time and members on the floor and visitors in the gallery shouting, 'Louder! Louder!'- the House members considered, deliberated and appropriated over one and a quarter million dollars of the state's funds in an old-fashioned singing-school style.

"It was a regular 'Chorus of Money,' the Journal continues, as the House sang out the appropriations - a real, true, genuine omnibus passage of laws. No member objected to the procedure, which represented the expenditure of a vast sum of other people's money!

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The Speaker announced A bulk roll call and a bulk reading of bills'; and, calling a dozen owners of basso voices to the stand, each member was given a bill that carried an appropriation for some state institution or state department. 'Is every one ready?' asked the Speaker. A dozen members, with a dozen bills, answered: Aye, aye, sir !' One for the money, two for the show, three to make ready and four, they go!' shouted the presiding officer. And the reading members went. They sang and mum

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