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In view of the meager information conveyed by the title there has been some agitation in favor of requiring an explanatory note to accompany each bill on introduction. New Jersey adopted a rule which reads: "Each member when introducing a bill shall submit with each copy a statement setting out the objects proposed to be accomplished by its enactment and the localities or persons the bill will affect, which statement shall be referred to the committee with the bill." These statements are pasted on the printed copies of the bills in the hands of the members and, although not considered an integral part of these documents, are very helpful to all. The speaker of a recent session reports that the rule has been particularly useful in cases where the statute proposed contains no language except that which repeals an existing law. Where the proposed legislation affects special localities or individuals the notice informs the reader at once. The Wisconsin House requires a similar synopsis to be presented with the bill, but it does not appear on the printed copy.45 When it is remembered that the modern legislator has thousands of pages of printed matter before him, much of which is of an amendatory nature, on which he is supposed to assert an opinion, the value of a trustworthy summary of the provisions of the bills on his file is obvious.

* House Rule 71. It is optional in the Senate; Rule 36.

45 Rule 40. Bills in the Illinois Senate sometimes have explanatory statements appended to them but they amount to little. A rule similar to the New Jersey one, proposed by Progressives in the 1913 session of the New York Assembly, failed of adoption. (Journal, p. 17.)

CHAPTER IV

COMMITTEES

The real work of the legislature upon which the quality of legislation depends is fundamentally the work of the committees. With them rests the burden of sifting from the innumerable bills presented those worthy of consideration by the whole house, and upon them is laid the duty of revising, amending and presenting these measures in what is usually their final form. They are the only agents, as yet developed in this country for this purpose, upon which responsibility can be lodged.

In our state legislatures a meeting of the body of the house has lost much of its deliberative character. Discussion, save on occasional matters of political importance, has almost disappeared. Members in their desire to get business done are impatient and hostile to speech making, and a too conscientious member who tries to thresh out measures on the floor falls quickly into disfavor. The individual must consequently depend upon the judgment of a committee, inasmuch as pressure of time allows but little parliamentary discussion of even the most important legislation, and it is a physical impossibility for him to read the mass of printed matter prepared for his information and guidance.1 The committees must therefore be little parliaments in very fact, and it is no exaggeration to say that they are the most important factor in legislative procedure. Nowhere are experience and intellectual power better rewarded than in the detailed discussion possible around a table in a committee room.

EARLY FUNCTION OF STANDING COMMITTEES

In the early days when bills passed through the censorship of a select committee before introduction, the need for standing committees was not great. In 1800 there were but seven standing committees in the New York Assemby,2 and their duty was solely

1 A prominent member of the Pennsylvania Legislature states that at the close of a session he once piled on the floor the printed matter he had been expected to peruse. The pile was more than four feet high.

2 Journal of the New York Assembly (1800), p. 35.

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to report upon petitions referred to them. If the petition was worthy, the standing committee reported a resolution that a select committee be appointed to bring in a bill. Because of the increasing number of petitions, the standing committees had by 1830 increased to twenty-nine, and had been granted the right to introduce measures based upon petitions. However a bill might be introduced, it went immediately to the committee of the whole for consideration; for even private members' bills introduced on leave without the mediation of a committee escaped reference to a standing committee. If, after debate in the committee of the whole, imperfections remained, a bill might be committed to a standing committee, but such aid was seldom demanded. As, in the course of time, private members came more and more to introduce measures upon their own responsibility, the question of keeping clear the calendar of the committee of the whole became serious. Hence arose the modern practice of referring measures upon introduction to standing committees. Thereafter only select measures ever reached the committee of the whole.

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In Pennsylvania it was not until 1813 that standing committees were recognized by general resolution empowering the speaker to appoint them, and it was not until 1827 that they were made a regular institution by the rules. Their chief function was to undertake orders of inquiry at the command of the House, but their power to report by bill had to be authorized by specific resolution. By 1825, however, it had become the custom to grant this authorization by blanket resolution, and by 1830 the right of standing committees to report by bill was embodied in the rules. Repeating the experience of New York, reference to a committee upon introduction became the regular procedure when individual members began to present measures freely from the floor.

SELECTION OF COMMITTEES

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The appointment of committees is today a principal source of the speaker's power, for the practice of selection of committees by the house has met with negligible acceptance. The Nebraska House,

Ibid., 1830, pp. 37-39.

'Pennsylvania House Journal, 1813, p. 10.

House Rules (1827) No. 28.

Sutherland's Manual for Pennsylvania (1830), p. 81.

however, is an exception in that it has a committee on committees whose selections it approves, and the same is true of Utah. Pennsylvania after one trial of this system in 1913, when a strong progressive element sat in the House, has returned to the old method of appointment by the speaker.

Methods of appointment of senate committees differ more widely. In the majority of cases the selection rests, under the rules, with the president, but since in most states he holds his office by virtue of the fact that he is lieutenant-governor and may be of a political faith in opposition to the majority, this prerogative is sometimes denied him. In Oklahoma the constitution prescribes that senate committees shall be elected by majority vote, and in five other states the rules specify that the choice shall be by the senate.3 In the Senates of Kansas and Nebraska, committees are selected upon the recommendation of a committee on committees. The committees of the Vermont Senate are chosen by a group of three, viz., the president, the president pro tem, and one member elected by the body, but the right to overrule their appointments is reserved. In Connecticut, Delaware, Missouri, and Pennsylvania the selections are made by the president pro tem, who is also the majority leader.

Since the president of the senate is not usually a member of that body, his committee appointments are apt to be dictated by the party leader. Indeed the actual power of selection is so commonly surrendered that a recent attempt of the president of the New York Senate actually to exercise his parliamentary prerogative evoked surprise. Objecting that he had not been consulted regarding certain appointments which he did not approve, he refused to accept the responsibility of promulgating them. The party organization thereupon took the appointing power out of his hands and, having vested it in the Senate, put through the slate as voted in caucus. However, the responsibility for the appointments was lodged clearly where it belonged."

The minority members of committees in New York, Illinois and elsewhere are customarily chosen by the minority leader, the speaker

7 Oklahoma Constitution, Art. V., Sec. 28.

Illinois, Ohio, Rhode Island, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Albany Knickerbocker Press, January 14, 15, 1915. New York Times, January 14, 15, 1915.

being satisfied with exercising his control over members of his own party.10

Usually the member first named upon the committee becomes chairman. Because of the loose manner in which committee business is conducted, the chairman exercises an influence greatly in excess of that enjoyed by similar officials in Congress. The power to designate who they shall be is, therefore, highly prized by the speaker. In view of the abuse to which this power may so easily be put, committees should be permitted to choose their own chairmen, as is done in both houses in Rhode Island and Wisconsin, and in the West Virginia Senate.11

Few phases of legislative procedure have evoked more criticism than that which vests the committee appointing power in the speaker. Without doubt it renders him a very powerful official, not only because it gives him control over measures placed in the hands of trusted worthies, but because, by granting or denying committee places as rewards and punishments, his position as leader is strengthened.12 Nevertheless, it is possible that much of this criticism is unmerited in view of the difficulties of apportioning desirable committee berths among aspiring candidates. In addition to due care for party interests, consideration must be given to ability, experience, geographic distribution, et cetera, and regardless of the effort expended, the conscientious speaker is apt to find that his selections contain sinister combinations. The chairman of the committee on committees in the Pennsylvania House of 1913, who figured largely in the reform of the rules at that session, reports that his committee worked night and day in an attempt to distribute places fairly and honestly, yet the result of their labor drew the common charge that corrupt interests had prevailed.

NUMBER AND SIZE OF COMMITTEES

In many states the very number and size of committees defeats the purpose of their existence. The energy of members is dissipated

10 At the 1915 session of the Illinois House the speaker for the first time in years named full committees himself, refusing to recognize any leaders in the badly disorganized minority.

11 Under the Pennsylvania Rules of 1913 each committee elected its own chairman, but this feature was dropped when in 1915 the legislature returned to the old method of committee appointments.

12 Illustrations are familiar to all. They appear clearly whenever the selection of a speaker has exposed the party to factional disturbances.

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