But it is also often coercive.

Coercive

caucuses are

in

result. We are here as Democrats or as Republicans. Our duty
is not primarily to our party but to the country; but each desires
the success and welfare of his party. His future depends upon
the welfare of his party; then, unless there is some venial or
corrupt purpose or operating influence, when his party colleagues
meet in conference and the question is subjected to the test of
common sense and duty and the welfare of the party, if the reason
can be reached, the reason will be reached, and reason will prevail.
Mr. President, from what has been said and what appears
the public press, the caucus is not intended alone to reach the
reason. It is coercive. Suggestions of White House Democrats,
suggestions of Republicans surrendering for patronage fly thick
and fast when the least independence is shown. The caucus
action is the equivalent of saying, "When we cannot reach Sena-
tors through their reason, we will reach them through their fears."
The caucus demand is the equivalent of declaring that "Senators
are dishonest, and through motives and purposes and feelings that
are degrading, we can keep a Senator in line with us, regardless
of his honor and the delicacy of the communication that should
exist between members of this body."

I think caucuses of this kind are demoralizing to those upon demoralizing. whom they are intended to operate. In my judgment, when you find a Senator willing to submit his conscientious convictions upon

The caucus only defines a senator's

duty as a party member.

a great public question to the behest of a caucus because to violate the rule of a caucus would weaken him at the polls and make his chances of a return to the Senate fewer, you will find a man whose moral forces have been weakened and who is more likely to be reached by venial influences than the man who in his every vote stands by his convictions of duty.

Mr. BAILEY. From the beginning to the end of his speech, and from the first line of his preamble to the last line of his resolution, the Senator from Colorado has proceeded upon a false hypothesis. He has assumed that his Democratic associates are seeking to deprive him of his right to cast his vote in the Senate

according to his own judgment and conscience; and he does betray either an inability or an unwillingness to understand the difference between his relation to the Senate and his relation to his party. The Democratic caucus has simply and only defined his duty as a Democrat, and it is for him to determine how far his duty as a Senator requires him to disregard his duty as a Democrat. Mr. President, there is no Senator in this body and I doubt The whether there is any citizen of this country who is more tenacious necessity of majority of his opinion than I am; and yet, without any sacrifice of my rule in the self-respect, and without any sacrifice of my independence, over party. and again I have submitted to a decision of a majority of my party as to what candidate I should support and what platform he should stand upon. I expect to do that to the end, or until my party nominates such a man or promulgates such a platform that my duty as a citizen will not permit me to submit, and then I shall withdraw from the party, but in withdrawing I shall not try to sow the seeds of disorganisation there by denying their authority and jurisdiction to nominate a candidate and adopt a platform.

I believe, as the Senator from Colorado appears not to believe, in the right of the people to instruct a Senator. We are not here to represent ourselves. We are here to represent our States, and whenever I cannot honestly and conscientiously voice the sentiments of the people whose commission I hold, I will resign my seat in this body. I will not defy them; I will not keep their office and flaunt their convictions, but whenever I cannot obey their will and preserve my self-respect, I will take their commission back and lay it down unsullied at their feet and allow them to choose a Senator who can represent them without misrepresenting himself.

Senators

bound to

obey instructions.

and

I am a partisan myself, but I must be permitted to believe that Partisanship my partisanship had its origin in my patriotism. I am a partisan patriotism. because I believe the glory and welfare of my country are bound up in the success of the principles of the Democratic party; and I freely declare my belief that the Senators on the other side are actuated by the same conviction. I have heard men say they were Democrats because they were born in that political faith, and that

Partisanship requires acceptance of majority rule in the party.

Illustrations of majority rule.

other men are Republicans because they were so born. I have no doubt that this actually describes a certain class of men, but it can never describe the kind of a man who is fit to sit in the Senate of the United States as the ambassador from a great American Commonwealth. Those who come here are and ought to be controlled by a devotion to certain principles, and they unite themselves with a given party because they believe that party best calculated to promote the growth, the permanence, and the success of those principles.

Let us grant this, and what follows? As unerringly as night follows the day, it must follow that we recognize the right of the majority to prescribe the party conduct which is to perpetuate those principles. It will never happen that the party will take any position upon which every member of it will agree, but, agreeing in the main, they must consent to waive the immaterial or infrequent differences in order to promote the accomplishment of an important and common end.

That applies not only to political parties; it applies to every kind of an organisation. The right of the majority to rule is not a despotism. Jefferson declared it to be the vital principle of a Republic from which there is no appeal but to force. The rule of the majority is not only the vital principle of Republics but it is the vital principle of every organisation of every kind. Take your corporate institution organized for profit. So long as they pursue the object of their charter, the majority must rule. When the majority depart from the charter purpose, the member is not put to the necessity of withdrawing because he has investments there. He simply resorts to the courts and they dissuade the majority from abandoning the purposes of the incorporation. Take the great religious denominations of the country. Does a man forfeit his right to worship God, to believe in Christ and read the Scriptures simply because, belonging to the Methodist Church, he denies one of its tenets and is expelled? The Church expels a man who does not agree with it on important matters of doctrine but he can still serve and worship God in his own way. I believe

all Churches expel the unorthodox except the hard shell Baptist church, and it simply withdraws from the erring brother. There is no kind of an organisation under this flag to-day where the right of the majority to rule is not recognised and enforced. I subscribe to it; I submit to it cheerfully; and I only reserve the right, whenever I believe it departs so essentially from its fundamental principles that I can no longer co-operate with it, of doing as the Senator from Colorado has done more than once- I want the privilege of defying its decision.

102. A Criticism on the Efficiency of the House of Representatives

Mr. Bryce, in common with other European observers of the House of Representatives, is struck with the din of the House and its air of confusion and restlessness as compared with the decorum and dignity of the Senate or the Parliament of England. The House as a whole has proved a rather unwieldy working institution, and Mr. Bourke Cockran thus accounts for this condition of affairs:

repre

Mr. Speaker, It is to the proposal to extend the term of sentatives in Congress that I desire to address myself. I sympathize most keenly with every one who wishes to make vigorous the control of the people over their representatives and over every branch of the Government. It is precisely for that reason that I believe in extending that term. This is the popular branch of our political system. Popular control of the Government can be made effective only by making this House efficient. This House is the one branch of our Government that according to all testimony, is steadily declining in power, and its decline is obviously a decrease in the direct influence of the people over legislation. To what must this decline of the House be attributed? To two causes a defect, a fatal weakness in its structure as established by the Constitution, and almost inconceivable folly in the method of organization established by itself.

Sir, it is no exaggeration to say that the House is organized for disorder and incapacity. Look at it. This vast barnlike chamber

Causes for the ineffi

ciency of

the House.

The

difficulties

of speaking

in the

House.

Each member

busied with plans for reëlection.

Elections

Dccur

between sessions.

of itself is enough to make impracticable anything like intelligible debate. The distances between members in different parts of this Hall are such that conversation is seldom regarded as an interruption. In the resulting confusion, it is impossible to follow or even understand the proceedings. I sit in a part of the House now where for all that I can hear of the debates I might as well be out of the Chamber. To learn what the House is doing I must leave my seat, and this is forbidden by rules. To participate in the proceedings of the House I must therefore violate its rules. I can be attentive to my duties only by becoming disorderly in my behavior. Under the rules I am out of order now, for I am speaking from another Member's seat. If I attempted to speak from my own, I would be inaudible in a large part of the Hall.

Surely, Sir, it is not extravagant to say that the House seems to have embraced diligently every opportunity to reduce itself to incapacity by keeping itself in disorder. Against the absurdities of its own organization a complete remedy, of course, is always in its own hands. But the gravest cause of its incapacity is in the term of its Members, and this can be remedied only by a Constitutional amendment.

The Congress does not convene till the month of December preceding the choice of its successor. From the very moment he takes his oath of office before this desk, each Member is plunged into the throes of a struggle for reëlection. How can he perform his duties impartially and fearlessly while three-fourths of his attention must be distracted by the exigencies of his own position? You may say that the honest and efficient Member will neglect his personal interests and devote himself exclusively to his representative duties. Well, Mr. Speaker, what duty can be higher than seeing that his district is well represented? (Laughter.) And he must think himself the very best representative his district could find or else he could not justify himself in coming here.

The House is reduced to this position: in the first - the longer and more important - session, every Member is striving for renomination and reëlection from the very hour he is sworn in