youngest or least popular member. His duties are limited to the enforcement of the rules and generally to the maintenance of order and decorum in debate, including the selection, when several members rise at the same moment, of the one who is to carry on the discussion. These are duties of great importance, and his position one of great dignity, but neither the duties nor the position imply political power. It makes little difference to any English party in Parliament whether the occupant of the chair has come from their own or from the hostile ranks. The Speaker can lower or raise the tone and efficiency of the House as a whole by the way he presides over it: but a custom as strong as law forbids him to render help to his own side even by private advice. Whatever information as to parliamentary law he may feel free to give must be equally at the disposal of every member.

In America the Speaker has immense political power, and is permitted, nay expected, to use it in the interests of his party. In calling upon members to speak he prefers those of his own side. He decides in their favour such points of order as are not distinctly covered by the rules. His authority over the arrangement of business is so large that he can frequently advance or postpone particular bills or motions in a way which determines their fate. A recent and much-respected Speaker went the length of intimating that he would not allow a certain bill, to which he strongly objected, to be so much as presented to the House; and this he could do by refusing to recognize the member desiring to present it.

Although the Speaker seldom delivers a speech in the House, he may and does advise the other leaders of his party privately; and when they "go into caucus" (i.e. hold a party meeting to determine their action on some pending question) he is present and gives counsel. He is usually the most eminent member of the party who has a seat in the House, and is really, so far as the confidential direction of its policy goes, almost its leader. His most important privilege is, however, the nomination of the numerous standing committees already referred to. In the first Congress (April 1790) the House tried the plan of appointing its committees by ballot; but this worked so ill that in January 1790 the following rule was passed: "All committees shall be appointed by the Speaker

unless otherwise specially directed by the House." This rule has been re-adopted by each successive Congress since then. Not only does he, at the beginning of each Congress, select all the members of each of these committees, he even chooses the chairman of each, and thereby vests the direction of its business in hands approved by himself. The chairman is of course always selected from the party which commands the House, and the committee is so composed as to give that party a majority.

Since legislation and so much of the control of current administration as the House has been able to bring within its grasp, belong to these committees, their composition practically determines the action of the House on all questions of moment, and as the chairmanships of the more important committees are the posts of most influence, the disposal of them is a tremendous piece of patronage by which a Speaker can attract support to himself and his own section of the party, reward his friends, give politicians the opportunity of rising to distinction or practically extinguish their congressional career. The Speaker is, of course, far from free in disposing of these places. He has been obliged to secure his own election to the chair by promises to leading members and their friends; and while redeeming such promises, he must also regard the wishes of important groups of men or types of opinion, must compliment particular States by giving a place on good committees to their prominent representatives, must avoid nominations which could alarm particular interests. These conditions surround the exercise of his power with trouble and anxiety. Yet after all it is power, power which in the hands of a capable and ambitious man becomes so far-reaching that it is no exaggeration to call him the second, if not the first political figure in the United States, with an influence upon the fortunes of men and the course of domestic events superior, in ordinary times, to the President's, although shorter in its duration and less patent to the world.1

1 "The appointment of the committees implies the distribution of work to every member. It means the determination of the cast business shall take. It decides for or against all large matters of policy, or may so decide; for while Speakers will differ from each other greatly in force of character and in the wish to give positive direction to affairs, the weakest man cannot escape from the necessity of arranging the appointments with a view to the probable

The choice of a Speaker is therefore a political event of the highest significance; and the whole policy of a Congress sometimes turns upon whether the man selected represents one or another of two divergent tendencies in the majority. Following thereon comes his distribution of members among the committees, a critical point in the history of a Congress, and one which is watched with keen interest. He devotes himself to this function for the fortnight after his installation with an intensity equalling that of a European prime minister constructing a cabinet. The parallel goes further, for as the chairmanships of the chief committees may be compared to the cabinet offices of Europe, so the Speaker is himself a great party leader as well as the president of a deliberative assembly. Although expected to serve his party in all possible directions, he must not resort to all possible means. Both in the conduct of debate and in the formation of committees a certain measure of fairness to opponents is required from him. He must not palpably wrest the rules of the House to their disadvantage, though he may decide all doubtful points against them. He must give them a reasonable share of "the floor" (i.e. of debate). He must concede to them proper representation on committees.

The dignity of the Speaker's office is high. He receives $8000 a year, which is a large salary for America. In rank he stands next after the Vice-President and on a level with the justices of the Supreme Court. Washington society was once agitated by a claim of his wife to take precedence over the wives of these judges, a claim so ominous in a democratic country that efforts were made to have it adjusted without a formal decision.

character of measures which will be agitated. This, however, is far from the measure of the Speaker's power. All rules are more or less flexible. The current of precedents is never consistent or uniform. The bias of the Speaker at a critical moment will turn the scale. Mr. Randall as Speaker determined the assent of the House to the action of the Electoral Commission [of 1877]. Had he wished for a revolutionary attempt to prevent the announcement of Hayes's election, no one who has had experience in Congress, at least, will doubt that he could have forced the collision."- From an article in the New York Nation of April 4, 1878, by an experienced member of Congress.

CHAPTER XIII

THE HOUSE AT WORK

THE room in which the House meets is in the south wing of the Capitol, the Senate and the Supreme Court being lodged in the north wing. It is more than thrice as large as the English House of Commons, with a floor about equal in area to that of Westminster Hall, 139 feet long by 93 feet wide and 36 feet high. Light is admitted through the ceiling. There are on all sides deep galleries running backwards over the lobbies, and capable of holding two thousand five hundred persons. The proportions are so good that it is not till you observe how small a man looks at the farther end, and how faint ordinary voices sound, that you realize its vast size. The seats are arranged in curved concentric rows looking towards the Speaker, whose handsome marble chair is placed on a raised marble platform projecting slightly forward into the room, the clerks and the mace below in front of him, in front of the clerks the official stenographers, to the right the seat of the sergeant-at-arms. Each member has a revolving arm-chair, with a roomy desk in front of it, where he writes and keeps his papers. Behind these chairs runs a railing, and behind the railing is an open space into which some classes of strangers may be brought, where sofas stand against the wall, and where smoking is practised, even by strangers, though the rules forbid it.

When you enter, your first impression is of noise and turmoil, a noise like that of short sharp waves in a mountain lake, fretting under a squall against a rocky shore. The raising and dropping of desk lids, the scratching of pens, the clapping of hands to call the pages, keen little boys who race along the gangways, the pattering of many feet, the hum of talking, on the floor and in the galleries, make up a din over which the

Speaker with the sharp taps of his hammer, or the orators straining shrill throats, find it hard to make themselves audible. Nor is it only the noise that gives the impression of disorder. Often three or four members are on their feet at once, each shouting to catch the Speaker's attention. Others, tired of sitting still, rise to stretch themselves. Less favourable conditions for oratory cannot be imagined, and one is not surprised to be told that debate was more animated and practical in the much smaller room which the House formerly occupied.

Not only is the present room so big that only a powerful and well-trained voice can fill it, but the desks and chairs make a speaker feel as if he were addressing furniture rather than men, while of the members few seem to listen to the speeches. It is true that they sit in the House instead of running frequently out into the lobbies, but they are more occupied in talking or writing, or reading newspapers, than in attending to the debate. To attend is not easy, for only a shrill voice can overcome the murmurous roar; and one sometimes finds the newspapers in describing an unusually effective speech, observe that "Mr. So-and-So's speech drew listeners about him from all parts of the House." They could not hear him where they sat, so they left their places to crowd in the gangways near him. "Speaking in the House," says an American writer, "is like trying to address the people in the Broadway omnibuses from the curbstone in front of the Astor House. . . Men of fine intellect and of good ordinary elocution have exclaimed in despair that in the House of Representatives the mere physical effort to be heard uses up all the powers, so that intellectual action becomes impossible. The natural refuge is in written speeches or in habitual silence, which one dreads more and more to break."

It is hard to talk calm good sense at the top of your voice, hard to unfold a complicated measure. A speaker's vocal organs react upon his manner, and his manner on the substance of his speech. It is also hard to thunder at an unscrupulous majority or a factious minority when they do not sit opposite to you, but beside you, and perhaps too much occupied with their papers to turn round and listen to you. The Americans think this an advantage, because it prevents scenes