The Contributions of Samuel J. Randall to the Rules of the National House of Representatives

Extract

Students of government and well-informed public citizens usually point to Thomas B. Reed of Maine as the first Speaker of the House of Representatives to use the prerogative of his office and the rules of the House to force the passage of legislation demanded by the leaders of the majority party. Likewise “Uncle Joe” Cannon of Illinois is usually held up as the undesirable product of this concept of legislative procedure. Little attention has been centered on earlier Speakers such as James G. Blaine of Maine and Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania, who laid the foundations of such a tradition. Blaine contributed to this theory of dictatorial leadership by his committee selections, his partisan decisions, his personal attractiveness, and his expansion of the Speaker's prerogative in situations which allowed him to exercise his discretion. Randall, as Speaker, followed the course laid down by Blaine, but went a step further by actually seeking to add to his powers by changes in the rules. This effort produced important modifications which cleared out the underbrush of tangled rules, thus preparing the way for the later timber-felling reforms of “Czar Reed.”