Congress Adjourns

...To this last charge the bulk of his fellow-citizens will answer for him: if the Mis-sourian has shown that he has done his part to purify the politics of his country, any enhancement of his prospects as a servant of the people in higher office has been most properly earned...

...There have been filibusters in this august body before, but seldom have tactics of obstruction been employed in a manner to arrest and hold public notice as they were at the end of the Congress which strangled itself to death on March 4. The determination of Senator David A. Reed of Pennsylvania to hold up all other business on which the Senate desired to take action rather than permit that body to vote on the resolution to extend the powers of the committee headed by Senator James A. Reed of Missouri, which has been investigating corruption in senatorial elections, immediately focused attention on a subject of more national importance than any of the measures which were side-tracked by his stubbornness...

...The chairman has had no easy task...

...There was a time, when Mr...

...The struggle of his namesake from Pennsylvania to curtail his endeavors can only have increased his prestige...

...Vice-President Dawes was in a position to point to proof of all he has maintained concerning the need of reform in the rules of the Senate...

...It is the only great parliamentary body in the world where such a situation exists...

...Its record of accomplishment was somewhat meagre, the one outstanding bill which received the approval of both branches having been promptly vetoed by the President with an analysis of the measure which was convincingly conclusive...

...If additional evidence were needed of the importance of the work undertaken by the investigating committee, it was furnished by this frantic effort of a senator from a state where wide-spread corruption is charged, to head off further inquiry...

...Dawes first launched his campaign for reform of the rules, when the issue he raised was not taken seriously...

...Later on, when ending the session, the Vice-President declared that the conditions under which it closed were due "to defective rules of the Senate, under which a minority can prevent a majority from exercising their right to bring measures to a vote...

...When, in a moment of exasperation, Senator Walsh of Massachusetts exclaimed: "I will not act under duress...

...A dozen other matters of importance went into the docket of unfinished business as a result of the filibusters which blocked all action in the Senate in the last days of the session...

...There can be little doubt that the object-lesson given by the filibusters of the Sixty-ninth Congress will make it a very real issue when the Vice-President again takes the stump, and will be the means of making its champion loom larger than ever as a national figure...

...Sooner or later, this Senate must become a legislative body"—the presiding officer remarked suavely, to a roar of laughter from the galleries: "The chair agrees with that...

...Nor did he allow the opportunity to pass...

...In all the turmoil of the last days of the session, one figure loomed serene and satisfied...

...he has had to deal with recalcitrant witnesses, he has had to endure sneers at his motives and the charge that he was serving his ambition as a candidate for his party's nomination for the Presidency by prosecuting the inquiry...

...Enough has been disclosed by the persistence of the Missouri senator at the hearings of the committee already held to demonstrate that a thorough investigation is imperatively necessary...

...Massachusetts has a right to her vote in this Senate and she cannot be coerced by a combination of Pennsylvania and New Hampshire...