This provision might have been somewhat more
effective had it been accompanied by a revision of the list of
committees such as was proposed by William M. Springer. He
pointed out that there were a number of committees "that have no
business to transact or business so trifling and unimportant as
to make it unnecessary to have standing committees upon such
subjects"; he proposed to abolish twenty-one of these committees
and to create four new ones to take their place; he showed that
"if we allow these twenty useless committees to be again put on
our list, to be called regularly in the morning hour... forty-two
days will be consumed in calling these committees"; and, finally,
he pointed out that the change would effect a saving since it
would "do away with sixteen committee clerkships."
This saving was, in fact, fatal to the success of Springer's
proposal, since it meant the extinction of so many sinecures
bestowed through congressional favor. In the end, Springer
reduced his proposed change to the creation of one general
committee on public expenditures to take the place of eight
committees on departmental expenditures. It was notorious that
such committees did nothing and could do nothing, and their
futility, save as dispensers of patronage, had been demonstrated
in a startling manner by the effect of the Acts of July 12, 1870,
and June 20, 1874, requiring all unused appropriations to be paid
into the Treasury.
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