sination of President McKinley, a new force was in control at the White House, and the Senate found itself engaged in more absorbing questions than amendments to the rules. Legislative developments, however, were soon to stimulate anew Mr. Platt's interest in the subject.

In the short session of Congress which met in December, 1902, obstruction for the sake of obstruction or revenge became a recognized feature of parliamentary procedure in the Senate. It was used from the beginning to prevent the Statehood bill from coming to a vote. Later the friends of the Statehood bill combined with others in retaliation to stifle with debate the much needed Aldrich Financial bill and the Philippine Tariff bill, while Tillman of South Carolina held Congress by the throat and forced amendments on two important appropriation bills in the last hours of the session. Morgan of Alabama deliberately talked over the fourth of March the treaty with Colombia providing for the cession of rights on the Isthmus, and compelled a special session of the Senate for the ratification of the Colombian and the Cuban reciprocity treaties. The country was aroused by all this. Mr. Cannon as Chairman of the Appropriations Committee focussed attention on the rules of the Senate by denouncing in the House the practice which in effect permitted legislation only by unanimous consent. Even so cautious a Senator as Allison of Iowa was stung into offering a resolution directing the Rules Committee to consider whether any changes should be made imposing a limit on debate. Mr. Hoar and Mr. Platt proposed amendments providing for closure under certain conditions. Nothing was done beyond referring these proposals to the Committee, but after the special session came to an

end Mr. Platt began at once to gather material with a view to pressing his amendment at the regular session the following winter. He did not think it possible to get the previous question in its naked form or any such drastic rules as obtained in the House, which to his mind resulted in the passage of ill-considered

measures:

What ought to be done in the Senate, in my judgment, is to allow reasonable opportunity for debate, and then compel a vote, but what is reasonable at one time in the session, would be entirely unreasonable at another time. For instance two or three weeks' debate in the early part of a session, upon an important measure, would be none too much, perhaps, while two days' debate at the end of a session would enable opponents of a measure to kill it, because they could talk the time out. The problem, and it is not of easy solution, is to get a rule which will be fair at different periods of the session. I think my proposition, that two fifths of the Senators may fix the time when a vote shall be taken, and limit the length of speeches to be made in the interim, comes as near to it as anything I have heard suggested, but perhaps that is not perfect. At any rate, I shall try to push the matter at the commencement of the next session.1

He had in mind especially Cuban reciprocity, but an amendment to the rules proved to be unnecessary for the immediate purpose. Public sentiment was slowly at work during the summer. President Roosevelt called Congress in special session in November for the express purpose of enacting legislation to carry the Cuban treaty into effect. The bill was duly passed and limitation of debate, no longer demanded for a particular object of legislation, was lost to sight

once more.

1 Letter to Jacob L. Greene, March 28, 1903.

CHAPTER XXXI

DIGNITY OF THE SENATE

"Legislation by Unanimous Consent"-The Senate not DecadentNot a Rich Man's Club-Opposes Seating of QuayThe Tillman-McLaurin Episode.

ON

every fit occasion the Connecticut Senator used plain speech concerning the curious growth known as the "Rules of the Senate." The habit of transacting business by unanimous consent was especially irritating and he was for revising the rules so as to do away with it altogether. In the spring of 1904 there was a bill before the Senate to allow Alaska to be represented by a delegate in Congress. Mr. Platt was opposed to it for the same reason that he would have opposed a delegate from the Philippines-because he feared it would be the entering wedge for statehood, and he was radically hostile to any proposition giving statehood to non-contiguous territory. Those in charge of the bill secured unanimous consent one day, fixing the time for its consideration. When the time arrived he was not ready to speak because he did not have at hand certain documents to which he wished to refer, but those who had secured unanimous consent insisted on taking the bill up at once. The Senator's wrath was roused. He spoke bluntly and frankly:

It seems to me that the Senate of the United States ought to provide by its rules the method in which it will

do business, and that the practice which has sprung up here of trying to do things by unanimous consent is in no way a substitute for rules which ought to be provided for the orderly transaction of the business of the Senate.

There never is a unanimous consent given here which does not bind some Senator in some way in which the Senator did not expect to be bound and did not suppose he was bound. I have seen unanimous consent asked for and given when there were not ten Senators in the Senate; and because asked for and given under these circumstances, there was supposed to be some sort of an obligation upon the Senators not present, and who would not, perhaps, have given their assent if they had been present, that that unanimous consent should be kept to the letter, and the fraction of the letter, that "the pound of flesh" should be taken, and that nothing should by any means interfere with the carrying out of such a unanimous-consent agreement. I do not intend hereafter to give my assent to fixing a time for action upon any bill. . . . The courtesy of the Senate is a mysterious, a fearful, and a wonderful thing. It is to be exercised on occasions, and on other occasions it is not to be exercised. I think that the experience of this day most certainly points to the necessity of having some rule in the Senate by which the Senate can do business in an orderly way and the rights of no Senator and the understandings of no Senator be invaded or infringed upon. I do not think that a previous question pure and simple ought to be adopted in this Senate; but I do think there ought to be some rule whereby debate can be limited to a reasonable time, and a time fixed for the taking of a vote otherwise than by unanimous consent, obtained in a thin Senate, when perhaps not more than five or six Senators are here.

Yet the slight respect in which he held some of its traditions was quite in keeping with his scrupulous regard for the Senate's essential dignities. There were

In

no questions to which he gave more conscientious thought than those concerning its integrity, and no criticism to which he was more keenly sensitive. He was proud of the body to which he belonged. He believed that the framers of the Constitution, under the lead of Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, builded wisely when by providing for equal representation of States, large and small, for long terms of service, and for election by the Legislatures instead of by popular vote, they put the members of one branch of Congress beyond the reach of temporary clamor. He was convinced that in the equal independence of House and Senate rested the hope of safe and permanent legislation. He was impatient with those who bewailed the decadence of the Senate. his view the average of ability among Senators was much higher in the later days than in the earlier time, when men of larger fame commanded national applause. With the multiplicity of interests attending the growth of the country, the questions to be considered in Congress had become more complex and exacting, carried more far-reaching consequences, and called for more accurate and comprehensive knowledge than ever before. "A Senator who comes now to this chamber" he said in eulogizing Mr. George of Mississippi, "meets with an average ability with which the Senators of older times did not have to contend. No man can be pre-eminently conspicuous here today. There is too much of force, of learning, of strength, of ability here for any one man to stand head and shoulders above his associates." He used to say that in the Senate of his day there were more men in proportion to the membership who were well equipped to deal with the questions of the present than there