THE ROLL CALL
THE ROLL CALL on men and measures The Helmsman of the Senate RIGHT after the opening of the tariff session, a Senator who was serving his first term in the Senate, and who had somehow come to be...
...This long service is one of his chief assets...
...The management of these great appropriation bills year after year by a little group of navy yard Senators and Congressmen has resulted in giving us a system of "political navy yards" scattered along our coast line, absurd for purposes of defense and disgraceful from the standpoint of the waste of untold millions of the people's money...
...At other times he lectures them severely...
...Hale is a member of Finance...
...Then he looked again at the notice and saw that it was signed "Eugene Hale, Chairman...
...The idea that Senators outside of the Finance Committee should want to know the basis of the schedules proposed by Aldrich and Hale and their "associates...
...And the impetuous Tillman, with his outspoken ways, fairly "stuns" the great conserver of senatorial dignity...
...At the opening of the tariff session, Elkins and some Democrats and others made a protest in the Senate against "New England's close corporation methods of making a tariff...
...In fact it is familiarly called in the Senate "the Steering Committee...
...But even in the case of such legislation, required in the name of humanity on behalf of the sufferers of a public calamity in New England, the Hale authority must be asserted and Hale rises again to admonish the Senate that it is only by his gracious leave that the Senate is permitted to act...
...The case of Hale is a good illustration of the practice of Senate leaders of the Aldrich machine in the matter of committee appointments...
...President, are in contravention of the rule established by the Senate that no legislation except in relation to the tariff and the census should be enacted until after the tariff has been disposed of...
...He serves notice that he is still, like Horatius, guarding the bridge...
...Then all the "me-too" Senators, who had been expecting to come tomorrow, will assume a look of we-knew-it-all-the-time assurance and that's-just-as-we-would-have-it satisfaction, and the Hale motion will be agreed to as a matter of course, because Hale speaks for the "Steering Committee...
...In last week's Roll Call we quoted from the analysis of this situation by Senator Burkett showing how the control of these committees is gathered in the hands of a few Senators by their appointment upon several of these committees to the entire exclusion from them of a large part of the membership of the Senate...
...But there are some of these things that are so necessitous in their nature, and of so little importance as legislation, I shall not, as they arise, feel constrained to urge the objection...
...Of Senator Hale's record in the tariff session it is perhaps sufficient to say that he was the first in rank of Senator Al-drich's "associates" on the committees from New England...
...The suggestion was greeted by the "Senate leaders" as absurd if not, indeed, quite scandalous...
...In case a measure is proposed like the Missouri resolution for the investigation of railroad rates, hale arises in his place and admonishes the Senate that such action "is clearly against the order of the Senate," that the bill or resolution should be sent to a committee to be pigeonholed in order that it "may not be continually reappearing in the Senate" to "pester" the "Senate leaders" in disrespectful disregard of Hale's "order of business...
...He is the self-appointed repository of Senate law and Senate tradition...
...This Congress, he is chairman of Appropriations and, by virtue of his long domination of Naval Affairs, will be practically chairman of that committee, although he turned over to Senator Perkins of California the nominal chairmanship so as to be able to take the chairmanship of Appropriations...
...THE ROLL CALL on men and measures The Helmsman of the Senate RIGHT after the opening of the tariff session, a Senator who was serving his first term in the Senate, and who had somehow come to be appointed chairman of a committee having legislation in charge, received a notice to the effect that it was the "sense of the Committee on Order of Business" that the committees of the Senate should report no legislation at that session of Congress, except the tariff bill and the census bill, an emergency measure left over from the preceding Congress...
...The session will be running along in the usual methodical way...
...It cut off measures with which the "Senate leaders" do not wish to be bothered and to be under the necessity, as elkins put it, of "looking after" them...
...For many years Hale has been chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs, which has charge of the hundreds of millions of dollars of appropriations under the naval appropriation bills...
...Hale has been a member of the Senate continuously for almost a generation of time...
...The purpose of the proceeding being to leave the "System" management free to set up its tariff program without distraction...
...He said that this was "one of the points of enlightenment that is coming from this Congress...
...Of the six or seven next most important committees, the Committee on Appropriations is one and the Committee on Naval Affairs is another...
...There were suggestions that this, even if true, was not a sufficient reason why it should not be done differently and better at this time...
...Of course, if the matter should be one to which the Aldrich management has no objection, Hale may let it pass, as in the case of a resolution to extend the time for the treatment of cases in the marine hospital, following the disaster at Chelsea, Massachusetts...
...There are seven or eight really important committees in the Senate...
...But, in the Hale presence, any suggestion that there might be a better way than the way of tradition has little chance to be heard...
...And accordingly, Senator Hale's permission having been obtained, and no one else having even thought of opposing the resolution it is agreed to without objection...
...and they are not...
...He is on the side of might, the side of votes, the Aldrich side...
...Suddenly Hale will rise in his place and address the Vice President with grave formality and make a motion that the Senate do now adjourn till day-after-tomorrow...
...that is immaterial...
...The enactment of this legislation year by year is marked in both Houses of Congress by unseemly and shameless wrangles among the members of the Naval Committee about "getting their share...
...When Hale speaks as authority the facts are expected to recede from the memory of men and to efface themselves from the recorded pages of history...
...Also he warns the Senate that it must not presume from his indulgence in such a case that the bars are to be let down...
...Why should these Senators want to know...
...To the awe-inspired Senate manikins of the Aldrich machiae Hale's answer was sufficient even though it was not true...
...Also he was a conspicuous champion of the theory that the "tariff makes no difference," that the prices paid by consumers were made not by the tariff but by the merchants...
...The "Committee on Order of Business" is the Aldrich management's steering machinery through which it manages the Senate proceedings...
...The only time through all the tariff session that Hale disagreed in the senate with Aldrich was on the vote on the Democratic duty on pine-apples...
...As organized under the Hale leadership, this committee is controlled by Senators who have navy yards in their states and to a small number of whose constituents the naval appropriation bill has been "pork barrel" legislation of the most vicious kind...
...The most important committee of the Senate is the Committee on Finance...
...It pains him to see the boisterous and unseemly conduct in the Senate of the irresponsible senatorial youngsters of sixty and sixty-five...
...He turned to the committee list of the Congressional Directory for information...
...Except when not voting, on the 127 roll calls, he voted always and constantly with Aldrich...
...Last Congress he was chairman of Naval Affairs and, by reason of the illness and death of Senator Allison, was acting chairman of Appropriations...
...His merest declaration given upon the authority of his long service, is expected to overwhelm all contrary opinion...
...I should still hope that until we get out of the woods as to tariff legislation, which is the main thing that brings us here, any important piece of legislation, will not be attempted...
...In such a case the forward one is warned that his course is in violation of the ancient practice of the Senate...
...It is through Hale as Chairman of the "Steering Committee," that the orders of the "System" management are delivered to the Senate...
...It was objected by the other Senators that the Democratic members of the Committee should be allowed to be present and to examine the witnesses, and that the testimony taken should be printed so that Senators who would have to vote on the bill in the Senate could know the evidence upon which the schedules were based...
...Not only does hale put through these little regulations for the ordering of the senate business, but he assumes personal responsibility for their enforcement...
...They admitted unto them and heard for their guidance in their deliberations the testimony of such as they chose of the emissaries of "Big Business"—those who had the "System" pass word...
...Hale steers the Senate...
...He fixes the time when it shall meet again...
...Of the investigation as it was being conducted, he declared "it is being done as it has always been done in every tariff hearing...
...Hale may not be right as to the facts...
...They become discredited...
...He tells it when it can have a day off...
...Some days after the service of this notice we find hale offering in the Senate a resolution to make effective the "sentiment of the Senate" which was at first but the "sense of the Committee on Order of Business...
...And while the other members are wrangling and fighting for "their share" Hale takes what he wants for his navy yard with one hand and runs the navy with the other...
...To this demand for an open hearing it was Hale who answered first that such a proceeding would be unheard of and unprecedented in senatorial usage...
...He adjourns the Senate...
...He puts it at work overtime...
...They are the committees that have charge of the great measures affecting the most important public interests...
...At times he pleads with them to remember the sacred traditions of the Senate...
...To the demand of progressive Senators for downward revision of the tariff he answered that the cry for downward revision was "exaggerated...
...that downward revision "never was put into the Republican platform...
...It is especially when Senators propose to do something not on the program of the Aldrich management that Hale's authority becomes a power in the Senate...
...He arises and, in measured, senatorial tones, he says: "All these acts of legislation, Mr...
...It was in his capacity as Steersman of the Senate that Hale served the notice upon the committee chairmen to pigeonhole all legislation for the tariff session except the census and tariff bills...
...The new Senator wondered who was this "Committee on Order of Business" that assumed to dictate to the chairmen of Senate committees what they should do, or rather what they should not do...
...But he did not find the "Committee on Order of Business" listed...
...He puts against the facts the authority of his long service, of his long experience...
...That order was adopted by the Senate at my suggestion...
...If the Senator in question is one kind of a Senator, he will withdraw penitently, hardly daring to indulge the hope that Hale will forget and forgive his unintended but none the less treasonable design against the hoary institution of Senate usage...
...The Aldrich members of the Finance Committee had shut themselves up in secret conclave in the Star Chamber of the Finance Committee, in the throne room of Aldrich in the new Senate office building, to confer and decide upon the schedules and duties of the new tariff...
...As Aldrich is captain of the senatorial ship, so Hale is the helmsman...
...Hale is the very bulwark of senatorial decorum...
...In his steering of affairs in the Senate he himself is authority for what he says...
Vol. 1 • September 1909 • No. 46
