It is not surprising that the procedure of the American house of representatives should be subject to frequent outbreaks of criticism. The house is the organ which voices the immediate wishes of eighty millions of very active people, who are not the least of humanity in their desire to have what they want. As they usually do not agree as to what they want, and as what they shall have must be determined by a majority of their representatives, there must necessarily be from time to time large minorities of dissatisfied persons. Some of these will, according to the laws of human nature, complain of the processes by which the representatives have attained the result. Just at present we are witnessing an active recurrence of this criticism, accompanied by some interesting prescriptions for alleged troubles. Whether or not the troubles exist and the nature of the proposed remedies are important subjects for examination.

At the outset it is necessary to inquire as to the exact relations of the house of representatives to our form of government. This will sweep away some of the plausible but very superficial theories of those who conceive it a disadvantage that our speakership should differ from the speakership of the house of commons, and who seem to think that our house might easily be directed in its procedure by the president's cabinet, as the house of commons is directed by the mininstry of the crown. We are told with great jauntiness that in the early years of the republic the speaker of the house was simply a presiding officer like the speaker of the house of commons, and not at all a political leader.

Frequent, emphatic, and apparently unanimous for many years, have been the complaints that there is too great an output of statutory law by the fifty-odd legislative bodies within the sovereignty of the United States. No less widespread are the charges that the majority of these statutes are unwise, ill-digested and badly drawn. Rarely, however, does one hear a remedy suggested, nor are the causes of these evils often subjected to analysis. The newspapers, to be sure, with their admirable capacity for passing judgment on all things at a moment's notice, without need of the slow process by which other people must arrive at conclusions, have long ago found both the cause and the cure. It would seem, according to most of them, that the cause is found in the preternatural wickedness and incapacity of the men elected to legislatures; while the remedy appears to lie in having just as few sessions as possible, and having the members hurry through their task with the greatest speed that is physically attainable. The public, having no other means of information, reflect the reportorial wisdom.

This paper proposes to show that the true cause of the evil is found in the constitution and methods of our legislative bodies, by which a thorough discussion of proposed legislation, and a proper sifting of worthy bills out of the chaff, are made exceedingly difficult. If the cause is clearly understood, a point of vantage will have been gained from which reforms can be undertaken with reasonable hope of success.

There is perhaps no phase of the American race problem which has been discussed quite so much within the last decade as the Jim Crow laws; that is, the statutes requiring separate accommodations for white and colored passengers in public conveyances. This has been the case largely because these legislative enactments are of general concern, while the other legal distinctions have directly affected only certain classes of either race. For instance, the laws prohibiting intermarriage concern only those of marriageable age; the suffrage qualifications apply only to males of voting age: the statutes requiring separate schools immediately affect only children and youths. But the laws requiring white and colored passengers to occupy separate seats of compartments or coaches concern every man, woman, and child, who travels, the country over. They affect not only those living in the States where the laws are in force, but the entire traveling public. The white man or the colored man in Massachusetts may not care anything about the suffrage restrictions of South Carolina, but, if he travels through the South, he must experience the requirements of the Jim Crow laws.

Inasmuch, then, as these statutes are of such general concern, it is proper that the people should know where they are, what they are, and the means of their execution. It is not the purpose of this article to take sides and discuss the justice or injustice of the laws, or the partiality or the impartiality of their execution, but rather to examine the provisions of the laws, and, so far as may be, to summarize the court decisions upon the different sections of the laws.