THE ROLL CALL

...Against caucus and committee secrecy in the conduct of the public business, La Follette and the other Progressive Republicans of the Senate are making a definite issue...

...In the Senate of the United States the control of the public business rests still, in the main, with extra-legal and extra-constitutional caucuses and committees...

...They have made this issue upon the organization of the committees of the Senate through the medium of a secret caucus...

...They made it again and clearly the other day upon the resolution for the reinvestigation of the election of William Lorimer...

...In protest against the destruction through the caucus system of that true expression of the consent of the governed has grown up almost nation-wide the system of direct primaries for the election of public officials and of those charged with the management of political parties...

...This committee had previously been constituted through the medium of a secret caucus, so that of its 15 members, 9 were Senators who had voted only a few months before to keep Lorimer in the Senate...

...Secrecy of Caucus and Committee IN THE House of Representatives, the System of the delegation to the Speaker of the power to make the committees which control the fate of legislation has been broken down under the assaults of public opinion and those who have faithfully represented it...

...The business in these caucuses and committees is conducted behind closed doors, without official record and under an implied pledge of secrecy...

...When Special Interests tempt or control those in whose hands the power of government is placed to exercise that control to promote those Interests at the expense of the people, it becomes all important that the people know every act and understand every motive controlling the conduct of their representatives affecting the public business...

...Equally so are those guarantors of the liberties of the people which require public records of the official acts of the public representatives charged and entrusted with the con-duct of government...

...No less vicious and abhorrent, no less antagonistic to free government than the suppression of free speech and free press are those extra-constitutional and extra-legal arrangements and institutions which have grown up, System-fostered, in the conduct of our public affairs, whereby the important interests of the people are disposed of in secret caucus and the responsibility of their representatives dissipated and destroyed through the delegation and re-delegation and sub-delegation of their powers and duties...

...Senatorial "Understandings" WHEN it became apparent in the Senate that a re-investigation of Lorimer could not be defeated, the leaders of the regular organization on both sides of the Senate chamber put their heads together in secret conference and arranged to place the control of the investigation in the hands of the committee on Privileges and Elections...

...That the executive session of the committee and the secret caucus are ready tools to the hands of the perver-ters of representative government has been demonstrated time and again by the fate of legislation in the public interest and of measures for which the public demand was simply overwhelming...

...That government be conducted in public and not in secret is vital to true representation of the whole people in the conduct of gov-ernment...