CONGRESS. (THE APPORTIONMENT.) 



163 



" Mr. Bowne submitted that 



" ' There was no necessity for this House to be 

 told that they were not to be enlarged because 

 they were a disorderly, inefficient body, that they 

 were growing into disrepute with the public, and 

 to lecture them as if they were a set of schoolboys 

 coming here to learn the first rudiments of politi- 

 cal science.' 



" These were the reasons urged against increas- 

 ing the size of the House when it had only 240 

 members. What would those gentlemen say if 

 they could sit here in this House, with a member- 

 ship of 357, deliberately acting as representatives 

 of the people and legislating, as suggested by the 

 gentleman from Illinois? 



" In 1882, twenty years ago, Mr. Herbert stated 

 as a reason why the House should not be increased 

 that ' we all know that gentlemen now sit here 

 for a whole Congress and do not know all of their 

 fellow members even by sight.' 



" Mr. Springer thought that an increase of over 

 293 would make it necessary to remove the desks 

 and make other arrangements for seating the mem- 

 bers. And members of the House were referred 

 to in 1882, twenty years ago, by a distinguished 

 member of the Senate, as sitting here as ' a dumb, 

 uninfluential herd.' 



" Mr. Merrill said in the Senate : 



" ' I appeal to the knowledge of Senators who 

 were in the House twenty years ago, when order 

 was maintained there and the Speaker sat in his 

 chair.' 



" It seems that after 1842 there was a period 

 twenty years later when order was maintained 

 here notwithstanding the size of the House had 

 been increased, and notwithstanding terrible fore- 

 bodings of the statesmen of that generation. But, 

 continues Mr. Merrill (this is twenty years ago) : 



" ' Now the Speaker has to stand up all the time 

 and speak in a stentorian voice and constantly be 

 rapping on his desk to maintain order in a little 

 circle round about the chair; and it is a fact that 

 very few members are able to participate under- 

 standingly in the transaction of business.' 



" That is a description of. this House twenty 

 years ago, when it had 325 members. And now 

 the chairman of this committee is not able, with 

 his knowledge of this House and its deliberations, 

 to draw anything like so drastic a picture of the 

 conditions which he thinks may afflict us if the 

 membership is increased; and certainly the ex- 

 treme conditions thus described do not exist to- 

 day with a larger membership. 



" The gentleman says that men are sent here to 

 legislate. 1 agree with him. But, I ask, why is 

 it that members of this House have no information 

 in detail about the river and harbor appropriation 

 bill except such items as happen to concern their 

 districts, their special harbor, or their special 

 brook that is to be improved under that great bill ? 

 Why is it that none of them understood the pro- 

 visions or knew the terms of the bill appropriat- 

 ing $145,000,000 that passed this House in eleven 

 minutes during this session? 



" Why is it that so few members of this House 

 understood fully the details of the bill that passed 

 before the recess giving to two great railroads that 

 enter this capital cash and property ranging in 

 value anywhere from $4,000,000 to $6,000,000? Is 

 it because the House is too large, or because the 

 constituencies are too large? I submit to the can- 

 did consideration of members of this House that 

 it is by reason of the size of the constituencies 

 that the members of this House are not able to 

 give the time to independent investigation, so that 

 they may know whether a report that a committee 

 brings into this House is wise or unwise. 



"How is the time of members of this House 

 occupied? Is it occupied in legislating upon this 

 floor, or is it occupied from early morn i MM- J M read- 

 ing over the hist mail that reaehes every member 

 voicing the wants of his constituents, '.)! per cent, 

 of whose demands are aside from any legislation 

 upon this floor? Or is it because the members are 

 obliged to read their correspondence and, in the 

 exercise of ordinary courtesy, to answer it. and 

 then to visit department after department during 

 the morning hours and during the hours this 

 House is in session? Or is it because members are 

 obliged to look out for needy constituents who 

 desire to be injected into office, and who, once in- 

 jected, desire to be promoted or to have their 

 salaries increased, and are not willing to rest upon 

 a letter written to a head of a department asking 

 him to increase the salary or promote the needy 

 applicant, but must insist upon a member making 

 a personal visit to the head of the department and 

 pressing the claims of his constituents? 



" It is not the size of the House that prevents 

 members from having an intelligent understand- 

 ing of the legislation pending before this body; it 

 is the size of the constituencies. Mediums of com- 

 munication fast mails, telegraphs, telephones, 

 etc. do what? They simply concentrate in in- 

 tensified volume these applications and demands 

 of every intelligent constituency upon the Rep- 

 resentatives that sit here. What is the remedy of 

 the gentleman from Illinois to enable this House 

 to more intelligently legislate? Not, he says, that 

 men may make speeches, not that they may take 

 part in debate, but, that they may know what is 

 going on in this House, increase the burden that 

 now prevents this result." 



Mr. Shattuc, of Ohio, took up the issue raised 

 in his resolutions given above. He quoted the 

 second section of the fourteenth amendment: 



" Representatives shall be apportioned among 

 the several States according to their respective 

 numbers, counting the whole number of persons 

 in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But 

 when the right to vote at any election for the 

 choice of electors for President and Vice-President 

 of the United States, Representatives in Congress, 

 the executive and judicial officers of a State, or 

 the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied 

 to any of the male members of such State, being 

 twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United 

 States, or in any way abridged, except for partici- 

 pation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of rep- 

 resentation therein shall be reduced in the pro- 

 portion which the number of such male citizens 

 shall bear to the whole number of male citizens 

 twenty-one years of age in such State." 



He then argued for the absolute and literal en- 

 forcement of this constitutional provision in all 

 the States. He said: 



" When in former Congresses, before which the 

 question of apportionment came, it was urged that 

 the right to vote in certain Southern States was 

 being denied by the operations of the Kuklux 

 Klan through what the Senator from South 

 Carolina and the Democratic custodian of the 

 Declaration of Independence defends as a system 

 of * fraud and intimidation ' the point was made 

 by the Democratic members that these denials, 

 these abridgments of the electorates, were the acts 

 of individuals and not of States, and that in con- 

 sequence the fourteenth amendment was not ap- 

 plicable and could not become so until the States 

 acted. Congress seemed to take that view, for 

 nothing was done. But within the last decade, in 

 the picturesque words of the same statesman 1 have 

 quoted, the politicians in these States ' grew tired ' 

 of their bloody work. They sought to do by pro- 



