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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
The regular long session of the 69th Congress met in December to harvest the legislative fruits of the Republican victory of 1924, then almost too well dried by thirteen months' standing and a little damaged by some bad weather in the special session of the Senate. The spirit of quiet husbandry, almost bereft of partisanship, was signalized by the enactment of the Revenue Act of February 26, 1926, which at last virtually realized the oft-frustrated “Mellon plan” of tax revision. Within two months, however, the propitious, if hardly exciting, skies that looked down on these early scenes were darkened, and an almost dramatic transition from sunshine to the shadow of farm-relief perplexities and the distant thunder of the oncoming primaries invested the session with other points of interest besides its industry and output.
For previous notes on the work of Congress, prepared by Lindsay Rogers, see American Political Science Review, vol. 13, p. 251; vol. 14, pp. 74, 659; vol. 15, p. 366; vol. 16, p. 41; vol. 18, p. 79; vol. 19, p. 761.
2 A total of 13,909 bills and resolutions were introduced in the House during the first session of the 69th Congress, as against 10,481, 9,775, 11,419, and 6,873 in the first sessions of the 68th, 67th, 66th, and 65th Congresses. In the House of Representatives, according to the tally clerk, there were 1,495 committee reports, of which 615 were on the private calendar. At the time of adjournment, 1,321 of the bills reported had been acted upon and 174 were pending.
3 A special committee on this case reported on Dec. 22 (Congressional Record, p. 943) recommending no action while Mr. Langley still had a chance of appeal, “in accordance with precedent that final action shall not be taken until a criminal charge has been disposed of in the court of last resort.” Mr. Langley resigned on Jan. 11, after the Supreme Court had denied his application for a writ (p. 1491).
4 The reference here (as always when pages are given without further citation) is to the Congressional Record, 69th Congress, 1st Session, vol. 67. The Nye case is discussed at pp. 1256-1276, 1314-1324, 1356-1369, 1445-1471, 1525-1532. A brief in behalf of Mr. Nye is reprinted at pp. 1273-1275.
5 See this Review, Vol. 19, p. 764 (November, 1925).
6 The “calendar of motions to instruct committees” remained vacant through the session. It may be added in the same general connection, however, that on April 8 (pp. 6887-6897) an attempt was made by Mr. Barbour (Republican, Cal.) to get a vote on a motion to discharge the Census Committee from consideration of the bill for the reapportionment of representation (H. R. 111). He sought to justify the propriety of this motion by urging that the Constitution ordained a decennial reapportionment and that the motion was a matter of “high constitutional privilege.” The Speaker ruled against him on this point and was sustained by a vote of 87 to 265 (p. 6897).
7 Regarding the majority steering committee, Mr. Pou, the ranking minority member of the rules committee, remarked incidentally on June 18: “Now, Mr. Speaker, it is a matter of common knowledge that the business of this House is controlled by the Republican steering committee. I do not criticize this committee, but I cannot approve the system. It cannot be denied that the steering committee is all powerful. It can and does forbid the consideration of any measure to which a majority of the steering committee is opposed. This may be a surprising statement to some, but the steering committee is more powerful than any of the regular constituted committees of this House. It is more powerful than the committee on rules, because the majority of the committee on rules will not report any special rule in defiance of the mandate of the steering committee, which is the great super-committee of this House, with power to kill and to make alive” (p. 11528.)
8 Mr. Blanton, complaining that he could not get District of Columbia business acted upon in the absence of the chairman of the committee on District affairs, said of the majority floor leader: “He says that he deals only with the chairman of his committees, he recognizes only the chairmen of his committees to arrange and take up business—a silly, ridiculous excuse” (Feb. 20, p. 4022).
9 See Political Science Quarterly, Supplement, Record of Political Events, March, 1925, pp. 69-70.
10 The device of moving to suspend the rules and pass a bill (two-thirds being required) was used in the passage of the public buildings bill (H. R. 6559, Feb. 15, p. 3723), the bill for the deportation of certain aliens (H. R. 12444, June 7, p. 10820), and a bill to regulate practice before the Patent Office (H. R. 10735, June 7, p. 10821).
11 Infra, p. 615.
12 United States Daily, May 1, 1926, p. 1Google Scholar.
13 Senator Curtis, majority leader, remarked on May 13 (p. 9285): “Mr. President, the steering committee cannot consider what bills will be taken up until the bills are reported and are on the calendar. The steering committee cannot go to a committee and say, “You have to report out this bill. After bills get upon the calendar the steering committee is ready to act upon any bill in which any senator is interested, if he will appear before it.”
14 Illustrations of this were frequent in the remarks of Senator Curtis, majority leader. On June 1 (p. 10366) he announced for the information of Senator Copeland: “Mr. President, as I promised the senator, when the steering committee met last week I presented his request, together with the requests of a number of other senators. The chairman of the steering committee is arranging the program now and hopes to call the steering committee together within a day or two and arrange a program for the rest of the session. The senator's bill was presented to the committee by me as one of the bills to be taken up by the committee with a view to putting it on the list. I cannot say, of course, what they will do.”
15 Senator Pat Harrison, assistant Democratic floor leader, after remarking “such tense moments as this are unwelcome of course to all senators,” said on January 22 (p. 2272): “I hope the senator from South Carolina will withdraw his objection to the agreement offered by the senator from Arkansas,” referring to the arrangement which the minority leader had concluded with Senator Borah, head of the opposition to the World Court, as well as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, for a final vote on February 10. Senator Harrison urged his colleague not to give aid and comfort to Vice President Dawes' proposal for restriction of debate in the Senate.
16 The proposal was then opposed especially by Senators Robinson, Heflin, and Reed of Missouri. On the relation of its procedure to the Senate's place in our political institutions, see Rogers, Lindsay, The United States Senate (New York, Knopf, 1926)Google Scholar.
17 In the House, despite the resolution adopted by the Republican committee on committees in the spring,”… that in the selection of the committees we recognize as Republicans only those who supported the Republican national ticket and platform in the last campaign,” the assignments finally completed on December 15 treated the LaFollette supporters as Republicans, although shoving them to the tail-ends of relatively unimportant committees. In the Senate, the leaders retreated even further. On December 14, for example, the Republican committee on committees—previously deadlocked on the issue—decided to assign young Senator LaFollette as a Republican, although he wrote (December 15) declaring his “allegiance to the progressive principles and policies …. of the lateRobert M. LaFollette.”
18 See Bradley, Phillips, “The Farm Bloc,” Journal of Social Forces, vol. 3, pp. 714–718 (May, 1925)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 The student of human ambition may think it unnecessary to go beyond an obvious explanation that can be offered for Mr. Dawes' attitude. The student of sectionalism, however, will possibly find it an illustration of how the cumulative effects of five years of phenomenally frequent country bank failures command attention not only from those high in the agricultural implement industry but also in the sanhedrin of Middle Western finance. For one reason or another, certainly, the Vice President was willing to risk giving aid and comfort to the twittering political peewits which in 1924 were to have no refuge from his gun. It was said later that Mr. Dawes weakened in his support of the McNary-Haugen bill when preferential treatment of cotton in connection with a postponement of the collection of the equalization fee was introduced into the draft of the bill (press of June 23). Regarding sectional unity on the whole proposal, Senator Norris observed: “…. we have now reached an interesting phase of this history of legislation for farm relief, when the farmers of the West and the business men of the West presented a united front, or as near united as I have ever seen in all my service on the agricultural committee in regard to any proposition ….” (June 14, p. 11259).
20 On the earlier phase, see the revealing votes in the 68th Congress by which the Norbeck-Burtness bill (S. 2250) proposing loans for crop diversification in the wheat-growing states was defeated in the Senate on March 13, 1924, by 32 to 41 (Congressional Record, vol. 65, p. 4084Google Scholar), and by which the original McNary-Haugen bill was rejected in the House on June 3, 1924, by a vote of 155 to 223 (Ibid., p. 10341).
21 See Hearings before the Committee on Agriculture, House of Representatives, Sixty-Ninth Congress, First Session, Serial C, parts 1-16, pp. 1-1412, on Agricultural Relief.
22 Majorities of the state delegations of twenty-two states favored the Haugen bill, as follows: Ala. (6 to 3); Ariz.; Colo.; Idaho; Ill.; Ind.; Iowa; Kans.; Minn.; Mo.; Mont.; Nebr.; Nev.; N. M.; N. C. (7 to 2); N. D.; Okla.; S. D.; Utah; Wash.; Wis.; Wyo. The delegations of twenty-four states were preponderantly in opposition. Those of Ark. and Fla. were tied.
23 The Haugen plan seemed tied up with the tariff. Not without logic, Democratic spokesmen attacked it on the ground that it involved the bad principle of seeking equality by having “special privilege all around”; but their argument was not oblivious to such considerations as these: “The state of Mississippi last year imported into her borders nearly $3,000,000 of feed and food. Increase that on the average of 50 per cent and the Haugen bill would cost the people of Mississippi more than a million dollars ….” (Mr. Aswell, May 6, p. 8755).
24 The rô1es of the two chambers in the initiation of measures are indicated by the fact that the total, 896, comprised 557 House bills, 290 Senate bills, 24 House joint resolutions, and 25 Senate joint resolutions. In measuring the life-expectancy of bills, it should be remembered that the total, 896, includes 5 omnibus pension bills which covered 2,717 private pension bills, making virtually a total of 3,608 bills which became law out of 17,794 bills introduced in both houses during the session.
25 Politically, the Railroad Labor Act is significant because it is likely to take still more of the edge off the interest of the railroad brotherhoods in protest-politics, so important in recent years in such movements as the Conference for Progressive Political Action.
26 See this Review, vol. 19, p. 769 (November, 1925). Mr. Madden states that the cuts in the estimates that have been made since the establishment of the system in 1921 aggregate $351,526,429, of which, however, $312,361,792 was in connection with the first set of estimates.
27 Congressional Record, vol. 67, July 12, 1926, p. 13007Google Scholar, in the “review of appropriations, etc.,” by the chairman of the House committee on appropriations, Mr. Madden. The figures presented above in the text and in the subjoined table are taken from that source, from a review by the chairman of the Senate committee in the same issue, and in the case of one column from information supplied directly by the clerk of the House committee.
It should be remembered that discrepancies between the amounts called for in the budget estimates and in the bills as reported by the House committee on appropriations are especially likely in the case of the deficiency bills, for “as soon as the House committee reaches a point where it must conclude its consideration in order to get the bill into the House, word is sent to the Bureau of the Budget to divert estimates to the Senate from that date on” (letter from the committee clerk to the writer).
28 H. R. 9984, authorizing the reappointment of a certain army officer, was vetoed on May 14 because discipline required that the decisions of the efficiency board be treated as final. The other “messaged” veto, on July 2, concerned S. 4152, which sought to validate twenty oil and gas mining leases (the validity of which was questioned in pending litigation) upon unallotted lands within Indian reservations created by executive order.
29 New York Times, July 7, 1926, over a news-story which added: “…. it was mentioned, perhaps stressed, at the White House …. that one of the reasons for the success of the session was that the Senate and House assumed their own responsibility and undertook to function as an independent branch of the government without too much subservience to the Executive.”
30 See, however, the check on this point maintained currently in the Congressional Digest (a private publication, Washington, D. C.)
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