On the other hand, consider the petty annoyances to which a decent member outside the "organization" may be subjected, and the methods by which legitimate legislation, backed by him, may be blocked. The bill goes to an unfriendly committee. The chairman refuses to call the committee together, or, when forced to call it, a quorum does not attend. In case a quorum attends, the point may be raised that the bill is not printed, or the chairman may fail to have the original bill with him. Action may be postponed on various pretexts, or the bill may be referred to a subcommittee. The committee may kill the bill by laying it on the table. On the other hand, the committee may decide that the bill be reported to the House to pass. Then a common practice is for the chairman to pocket the bill, delaying to report it to the House till too late to pass it. When finally reported to the House, it goes on the calendar to be read a first time in its order. Then begins the advancing of bills by unanimous consent, without waiting to reach them in order. Here is where the "organization" has absolute control. Unanimous consent is subject to the speaker's acuteness of hearing. His hearing is sharpened or dulled according to the good standing of the objector or of the member pushing the bill. If one not friendly to the House "organization" wants to have his bill considered over an objection, he must move to suspend the rules. The Speaker may refuse to recognize him, or may put his motion and declare it carried or not carried, as suits his and the "organization's " desires. So the pet bills are jumped over others ahead of them on the calendar, while the ones not having the backing of the House "organization are retired farther and farther down until their ultimate passage becomes hopeless. If the bill of the independent member reaches second reading, it may be killed by striking out the enacting clause or by tacking on an obnoxious amendment that makes it repulsive to its former friends. A referendum requiring not a majority of those voting on the bill, but a majority of all the votes cast at the election to adopt it, is a new and favorite method of shelving a bill by amendment. To carry out the will of the "organization," the Speaker declares amendments carried, or the contrary, on viva voce vote. Demands for roll calls are ignored by him in violation of the members' constitutional rights. This is called gaveling a bill through. Formerly the gavel was used to carry through political measures of the majority party and to prevent obstructive and dilatory tactics of the minority party. By a gradual growth it has come to be used to help or defeat legislation in which the "organization" has an interest, although the majority may have a contrary view. What the Speaker declares the clerk must record, and what the clerk records no court will set aside.

If a bill comes through this critical stage of amendment safe and sound, it goes into the engrossing committee and becomes the victim of the chairman. He, in turn, may neglect to report it back until its place on the · calendar is so far behind that a single objecting member (subject to the Speaker's hearing) may prevent it ever reaching a vote.

The "organization's " control of a bill is not ended on roll call for passage. Here the members cannot escape a record. They must come out in the open, voting for or against it on roll call, or practically vote against it by remaining silent. It must have seventy-seven votes to pass. Failure to preserve a record showing a constitutional majority voting for it would invalidate the act. But the " organization" with the machinery in its hands may hold back the announcement of the vote while active work on the floor among members may change votes or persuade those not voting to support the bill. If its defeat is desired, the announcement is made promptly, leaving no time for such work.

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The foregoing will explain the importance of capturing the House organization." ." There are fifty-seven committees to be appointed, and to fill them the Speaker must make over a thousand assignments. He and his backers use these as inducements to members to join their forces. In addition he controls the House patronage. The same system applies to the Senate. The legislative pay roll is created on the first day's session, and in the confusion and, to the new members, novelty of the situation, resolution after resolution is put through, creating a needless and extravagant pay roll. At the same time a bill to provide $100,000 for this pay roll is started on its way to the Senate. Of this sum $75,000 used during the last session was clear waste, to pay for positions not provided by statute and not necessary to the work of the session. Ninety-three janitors and seventy policemen formed a portion of the two hundred and sixty-one sinecure jobs paid for out of this fund, and the only service required was to appear at the auditor's window and draw pay. The pay roll, by judicious distribution, was used to further the ends of the "organization."

After creating this pay roll the purely political play of setting up the pins of the "organization" commenced, while the state paid the enormous daily expenses of the session. Forty days were consumed before a single committee was appointed. Their make-up had to be carefully considered, not with any regard to public interests, but with a view to rewarding friends and punishing enemies. With a clique Speaker and a clique organization of committees it was thought the majority could be throttled. Meantime not a stroke of work was done except to pile up bills for the consideration of committees when appointed. Daily sessions of an hour's length were held on three days of the week during this time. Then a week after the appointment of the committees the first House bill passed. And still every effort in committee and on the floor was made to keep important legislation, excepting appropriation bills, in the background. This was done with a view to piling up the business for the last two weeks of the session, when, in the crush and confusion, the "organization" could advance its own bills and kill all others. Aside from formal bills to appropriate money and to fix court terms in some counties, no important legislation passed the House until seventy-eight days of the session were gone. Then the State Civil Service Bill, with its vitals torn out, was sent to the Senate.

Practically the House did not get down to business until the time to adjourn had been fixed. On March 31, nearly three months after its first meeting, it began to hold two sessions a day and to meet five days in the week. This program seemed merely to enliven some of the worst committees, and they began sending out their "regulators." A "regulator," "holdup bill," or "sandbagger" may be defined as a bill to regulate, tax, license, or prohibit certain industries. The manipulation and juggling of these bills has become an industry in the legislature. Of the eight hundred and seventy-three bills introduced in the House, over one hundred were bills of this nature. They came from about fifteen members, Republicans and Democrats, and mostly from Cook County. Many of these bills were greeted with a smile of recognition as they made their appearance from day to day, dug from the records of former sessions. The mechanical operation of a typewriter prepared them for renewed "usefulness." Some of the legislative clique had not the ingenuity or experience necessary to the selection of a "good proposition," and it is well known that such measures were handed them for introduction by experts in that line, with a promise of some of the fruits. The handling of the bills in committee and on the floor was left to the more astute and experienced members of the clique.

Most of such bills were sent to the committees on municipal corporations, corporations, railroads and license, and halted there in the expectation of being put to sleep. Their nurses expected a handsome consideration for their services. They had brought them into life and were their tender caretakers. The clique had been given absolute control of these committees, the decent members being a small minority. This was the clique's reward for the support its Republican members gave to the "organization" in electing the Speaker. Every one, including the Speaker who appointed them, and the committee that dictated to him their appointment, knew their sandbagging purposes. Their bills met none of the obstacles so easily placed in the way of broad constructive legislation in these committees. The proceedings of these committees were conducted without regard to parliamentary rules or a sense of fair play. Their complexion and methods smacked of the old-time precinct meeting of political heelers. Decent members, coming to the legislature with ambition and a desire to serve public interests, though Republicans, were relegated to inactive positions as members of the minority on these committees. Here they writhed at spectacles of demoralization they had never before witnessed. Jokes were bandied about and the wink exchanged when a notorious "sandbagger" was under discussion.

The control of four such important committees gave the disreputables a powerful leverage for bluff. Here their holdup measures were killed, postponed, or reported out, to suit their convenience. When sent to the House through the cowardice or friendliness of a complaisant Speaker, they were juggled on the floor to positions of vantage that were intended

to scare the financial interests affected. Yet in the few instances, when such bills came to a final vote, they were promptly killed by the honest majority.

Some members and some of the public are indifferent to this venal practice, because it "merely pulls the leg of some corporation." They overlook the fact that these bills crowd the calendar, force trading with venal men for votes, involve a principle, and result in the selling of souls. The few members who come to the legislature with the deliberate purpose of indulging in this illegitimate business are like rotten apples in a barrel. They taint the whole. It is true that few begin their career with this deliberate purpose. Yet the fact remains that in every session these bills are introduced to be used merely as clubs to knock down the persimmons in order that the hungry few may gorge themselves on the rotten fruit. It is further true that men of substance, who can justly claim to be good fathers, husbands, or neighbors, lend themselves to this slaughtering of the public good for private gain, either through cowardly weakness or because the almighty dollar is a stronger argument than a clear conscience. To one who has obtained a peep behind the scenes the pathos of the whole matter lies in the fact that in forty-nine cases out of fifty the money that has been put up to avoid vicious legislation is worse than wasted. If the vicious manipulator can be made to understand that every time he puts up money to obtain or prevent legislation where it cannot stand on its merits, he is simply bartering in human souls, his own included, the use of unlawful money can be kept out of our state legislature. If this is done for one session, more than 90 per cent of civic evil will disappear. This reform cannot be brought about by more stringent laws. It must be brought about by stirring public sentiment to the point where even the just suspicion of one's connection with boodling, either as one who furnishes the funds or as the director of an institution that will shut its eyes and wink at corruption, will cause one to be shunned by all honest men.

Even a casual observance of the workings of the legislature will show the absurdity of a party organization of the House. Party lines have little to do with the actual work of the legislature. With its organization they have no concern. There were only two strict party votes during the session: the first to elect a United States senator; the second to form a Republican supreme court district. Yet the pooh-bah of partyism was used to divide honest men, and the party caucus adhered to with perfunctory formality. To reform the legislature, partisanship and factionalism must be laid aside to the end that a Speaker be elected who will respect his oath of office, and who will appoint committees promptly and on lines of honesty and fitness. An important factor in accomplishing this reform will consist in abolishing the vicious pay roll, a growing evil and a factor in the organization of both House and Senate. With such reforms the work of the legislature will be sifted to the consideration of legitimate

legislation; deals, bargains, and trading of votes will, to a large extent, be eliminated, the sessions shortened by business methods being pursued, and the legislature will become, what it is now only in theory, a truly deliberative body. The election of men on their merits, regardless of party, will accomplish this reform. No mere laws or system of rules will do it. The question is up to the people of Cook County.

THE LOBBY1

BY GOVERNOR WILLIAM E. Russell

One thing above all is necessary to make law the true expression of the people's will. Broadening and protecting the suffrage, reforming and purifying elections, will fail of this purpose unless the lawmaking power is protected from insidious and corrupting influences, which tend to control legislation against the people's interest and to impair public confidence in its impartial enactment.

There exists in this state, as in other states, an irresponsible body known as the lobby, representing or preying upon special interests, which professes and undertakes for hire to influence or control legislation. Its work is wholly distinct and different from the advocacy of one's cause in person, or by counsel or agent, which is the constitutional right of every one. It seeks often to control nominations and elections, and to subject the individual legislator, directly or indirectly, to secret and improper influences. It throws suspicion upon the honest and temptation in the way of the dishonest. Professing power greater than it has, it frequently extorts money as the price of its silence or unnecessary assistance. It has initiated legislation, attacking the interests of its clients in order to be hired to defend those interests. It has caused the expenditures of large sums of money to obtain or defeat legislation. It cares little for the merits of a measure or the means employed to make it successful. In my judgment improper measures have, by its influence, been made law, against the public interest, and just measures have been defeated. These criticisms have not been based upon rumor or conjecture, but upon facts reported after most thorough investigation by your predecessors, who denounced the evil in unsparing terms and diligently sought a remedy. In 1887 they spoke of the methods thus employed as a struggle for success without regard to means"; "causing a growing demoralization "; and they added, "the venality and corruption which these practices encourage, tending to defeat that right and justice which the state is bound freely and without price to bestow, are a reproach to a free people." In the same year the governor, vetoing a measure because of the lobby influence, described the lobby as "a pernicious system," and its methods as "a monstrously bad and corrupting practice." In 1890 a

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1 From a message to the Massachusetts legislature, January, 1891.