" He explained that he excepted pension bills
"because we have for several years by special order remitted the
whole subject of pensions to a committee who bring in their bills
at sessions held one night in each week, when ten or fifteen
gentlemen decide what soldiers may have pensions and what
soldiers may not."
The Democratic party found this situation extremely irritating
when it came into power in the House. It was unable to do
anything of importance or even to define its own party policy,
and in the session of Congress beginning in December, 1885, it
sought to correct the situation by amending the rules. In this
undertaking it had sympathy and support on the Republican side.
The duress under which the House labored was pungently described
by Thomas B. Reed, who was just about that time revealing the
ability that gained for him the Republican leadership. In a
speech, delivered on December 16, 1885, he declared: "For the
last three Congresses the representatives of the people of the
United States have been in irons. They have been allowed to
transact no public business except at the dictation and by the
permission of a small coterie of gentlemen, who, while they
possessed individually more wisdom than any of the rest of us,
did not possess all the wisdom in the world."
The coterie alluded to by Mr. Reed was that which controlled the
committee on appropriations. Under the system created by the
rules of the House, bills pour in by tens of thousands.
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