CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



147 



to one provision in this bill which to me is 

 very objectionable. I have sincerely been in 

 favor of abolishing the franking privilege from 

 the first, I am so now, and shall vote for the 

 bill if it be not amended ; but I think it ought 

 to be amended. I have been sincerely in favor 

 of abolishing the franking privilege because I 

 believed it would be one means of retrenching 

 the expenses of our Government, in the vast, 

 in the astonishing amount of useless public 

 printing thut is done and that has swelled now 

 to the proportions of two or three million dol- 

 lars a year. This bill does not touch it at all, 

 bnt it provides that all matter printed by the 

 Government shall go free through the mail pre- 

 cisely as it goes now, only that it shall be paid 

 for out of the Treasury. It provides for the 

 distribution of all your public printed matter, 

 not your speeches, not your own private cor- 

 respondence ; bnt for all public printed matter 

 st:imps are to be furnished to the Secretary of 

 the Senate, and by him furnished to members. 

 Yon therefore fail to accomplish what I regard 

 as the greatest good to be done by the abolition 

 of the franking privilege ; you fail to apply that 

 remedy which in my judgment has become 

 necessary to stop this gigantic expenditure in 

 the way of public printing. I am not able to 

 say perhaps the chairman of the Committee 

 on Printing can tell me but I think the ex- 

 penditures for public printing last year were 

 between two and three million dollars. I do 

 not think in ordinary years they amount to 

 that ; and how many and how worthless are 

 the documents that are printed, that go back 

 to the paper manufacturer, again to be manu- 

 factured into material upon which printing is 

 again to be made. 



' N'ow, if the Senate are disposed to still con- 

 tinue that, you are then reduced simply to this 

 proposition : an abolition of the private frank- 

 ing privilege of members of Congress, leaving 

 every other abuse under existing law, leaving 

 all the vast expenses of your printing depart- 

 ment to go on precisely as they have been 

 going on and are going on now. 11 



Mr. Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, said : 

 " Mr. President, I shall vote for the amendment 

 of the Senator from Vermont. For why should 

 we vote money into the Treasury as postage if 

 we are afterward to vote it to ourselves to pay 

 postage witli '{ But it is not in reference to 

 this amendment that I have a word to say. 



"I am opposed, as is the party with which I 

 am associated, to the abases of the franking 

 privilege, and they should be corrected ; but I 

 am not opposed to the franking privilege prop- 

 erly guarded and administered. This bill does 

 not attempt to correct abuses, but abolishes 

 franking. This is a representative Govern- 

 ment, a Government by the people, and I ln>M 

 it, sir, eminently undesirable that there should 

 be a tax imposed upon the most free and unre- 

 strained communication between the people 

 and their representatives. Thus is the popular 

 will made known, the petitions of those injured 



heard, and information disseminated. The 

 franking privilege has done much to promote 

 human rights and liberty. So far as I am per- 

 sonally concerned, it would be a relief to be 

 free of the franking privilege. To me it is a 

 burden and no privilege. Bnt it is a most 

 valuable right to those that I represent. It be- 

 longs to my constituents. I know that the 

 people of this country, however, have not that 

 view of the subject. They fail to appreciate 

 the benefits of the franking privilege because 

 of its abuses. The bill we ought to pass is one 

 correcting the abuses of the privilege and not 

 abolishing it. Let me briefly and without due 

 consideration state what the- bill should be." 



Mr. Stewart, of Nevada, said : " I have here- 

 tofore voted against the repeal of the franking 

 privilege. I propose to vote for it now, and I 

 will give the reason for my vote. I had hoped 

 that the abuses complained of would be reme- 

 died without the repeal of the law ; but no le- 

 gislation of that character has been proposed. 

 I think if we repeal the law, and I should pre- 

 fer an absolute repeal to any other, whatever 

 may be necessary for the transaction of the 

 public business will then be done, and it will 

 be done by a perfectly fair bill. I do not be- 

 lieve that we shall ever get that legislation 

 which we ought to have on this subject until 

 the law is repealed and the question is brought 

 directly before Congress. 



Mr. Edmunds, of Vermont, said : " The bill 

 itself is an utter delusion, and I for one am 

 not afruid to say so. In the first place, it is 

 not honest. As the Senator from Maine has 

 said, it does not begin to do what it pretends 

 to do, what the people are taught to suppose 

 it is going to do. On the contrary, it puts the 

 Treasury Department to the expense of print- 

 ing a vast number of highly-engraved and 

 elegantly-gotten-up stamps, got out through 

 the intervention of the Post-Office Depart- 

 ment, not through the Bureau of Engraving 

 and Printing in the Treasury Department, 

 which we have to do that very tiling. 



"Mr. President, is it not a good thing for a 

 party and for the Senate to be tolerably candid 

 with the people of the United States ? If wo 

 have told the people of the United States in 

 our convention at Philadelphia that we were 

 going to abolish the franking privilege, where 

 is the use of saying to them we have abolished 

 it when we have not? Where is the use of 

 leading them to believe that we have accom- 

 plished a reform when we have gone back- 

 ward ? The people whom I have the honor 

 in part to represent do not have much faith in 

 that sort of thing ; and I presume it is so with 

 the people of other States ; and therefore the 

 Legislature of the State of Vermont at its last 

 session refused to pass a resolution in favor of 

 the abolition of the franking privilege, but did 

 pass a resolution, calling upon her Representa- 

 tives to take every means they could to redress 

 any abuses that might exist in it, because they 

 believed, as the Senator from New Jersey has 



