THE INIQUITY OF THE "CONFERENCE" SYSTEM
The Iniquity of the "Conference" System There are many tricks in the making o f laws. Perhaps the most familiar trick is known as the "joker." A "joker" in legislation is a well-known,...
...That was repeated day after day, until the members of this body and of the other body, thrown off guard, came to understand that after the weeks and months and years of agitation and campaigning this piece of legislation was to come to naught because of this difference between the two bodies...
...The conference report was put through...
...This Congressman exercised this privilege against a public official, who had not the privileges of the floor of Congress, as the result of the action of Commissioner Howe in having advised that the government should not continue a contract with a firm of former clients of the Congressman for feeding the immigrant men, women and children confided to the government's care...
...IDID not intend to speak of this at this time...
...Week after week those demands were repeated by the local banks that were being driven to the wall...
...President, the Senate knows from long experience that when such a report comes in, it is a hopeless proposition to undertake to deal with it in detail...
...It was an infinitely worse proposition from a financial and economic standpoint than was the bill as it was reported to the Senate...
...The bill passed with that amendment and other vitally important amendments in it, one of them providing that the officers of a national bank should not be permitted to speculate with the funds of the depositors of that bank...
...But I need not say to the Senators what everybody knows, that very often the public will is defeated, that public interest is perverted, and democracy is shackled in legislation as we enact it...
...It would have failed, (because the adjournment was so imminent that many senators had made their arrangements to leave, and the Senate and the House would be without a quorum,) but for a legislative trick resorted to in this floor—so reprehensible, Mr...
...President, the Record of the Senate was changed in order that I might be taken off the floor...
...I remain very respectfully yours, "W...
...7) He organized all of the employees at the station Into an association for making the wants of the employees known and for securing the cooperation of all the employees in the administration of the station...
...It is not necessary now for me to say who changed it, because the mutations of time have put it beyond the power of some of the men engaged in it to answer...
...He has added to the distinction of the present administration of the government...
...It was explained by Senator La Follette in his speech on the floor of the United States Senate July 26, 1916, when he exposed Gallinger's attempt to have the Taylor "sweating plan" for working men, slipped slyly into the Army Appropriation bill—IN CONFERENCE—after it had been rejected by both the House and the Senate...
...La Follette) one of the iniquities of our legislative system is that we turn over to conferees almost, if not quite, the absolute power to make legislation...
...THIS IS A DEMOCRACY...
...And, sir, let me tell you what occurred when that bill came back into the Senate in the form of a conference report...
...Well, Mr...
...A "joker" in legislation is a well-known, well-exposed, and well-condemned device by which bad provisions may be slipped into an otherwise acceptable bill...
...But there is another legislative trick employed in Congress quite as effectively as the "joker...
...no official who takes seriously the law's mandate to safeguard the WEAK AND oppressed who are in his care...
...Organizations all over the country,—bankers' organizations, commercial organizations, boards of trade,—had been organized behind the legislation that Senator Aldrich and his commission and his committee proposed TO PUT THROUGH...
...It is passed without discussion of each of the many subjects it may cover...
...10) During the past two years Ellis Island has been almost free from the constant criticism on the part of foreign organizations and of the foreign press, which prior to his administration was continuous...
...B. Wilson, Secretary of Labor...
...2) He re-investigated requests for money for permanent appropriations and after investigation reduced such request, in 1915, by $300,000...
...IAM GOING to call to the attention of the Senate an example of this sort...
...Why, sir, the Senate is practically powerless when considering a conference report...
...A campaign had been made over this country, extending over a period of years, such as we have seen in regard to few pieces of legislation...
...14) He organized a number of agencies looking to the protection of aliens in New York...
...I wonder if Senators can recall the large correspondence that they had during the year or so preceding the culmination of that legislation...
...But, sir, the conference committee met, and the public was informed that there was a wide difference between the House and the Senate and that no agreement would be effected...
...I had some reason to believe, therefore, and the Senate had some reason to believe, that those amendments were to go into the bill...
...If Senators will go back to the files of the papers of that time, they will find headlines, and news articles, sustaining the headlines, to the effect that "all financial legislation for this session is out of the range of possibility...
...4) He investigated the many immigration lodging houses and homes in New York and brought about a clean-up in a number of them...
...A Record was changed...
...Not only railroad bonds were back in the bill, but RAILROAD STOCKS, WAREHOUSE RECEIPTS, EVERY CONCEIVABLE THING WAS BACK IN THE BILL...
...The House had passed one bill, and the Senate passed a wholly different bill, and these were in conference, and no agreement could be reached...
...A commission had taken testimony in this country and in Europe...
...In actual practice it is possible, in these conferences, for a handful of representatives to shape legislation...
...I had not thought of it for years until the suggestion of what happens so often in conference came to me as I considered the effort (by GalLInger) to write the proposition of the pending amendment into this bill...
...I hope that we shall early adopt a rule that conference reports shall be open to consideration in their items and be open to amendment on the flooR...
...10) He brought about a change in the inspection of first and second cabin aliens on shipboard which greatly improved the service...
...Jokers" have long been a stench in the nostrils of the American people...
...Legally, they were bound to return them...
...The bill went into conference some six to eight weeks before the probable time of adjournment...
...that they had been issued at the will of the men who built the railroads...
...FROM this attack Commissioner Howe emerges not only completely vindicated, but with this statement of the Secretary of Labor made to Congress concerning the things he had done: "The following substantial achievements in the efficient administration of the station have been effected by Commissioner Howe: "(1) A thorough investigation with experts wa3 made of the cost of hospitals which were alleged to be self-sustaining...
...The railroads could exact enough, regardless of the money value back of the bonds and stocks, to pay interest on the bonds and dividends on the stocks...
...New York was using it for speculative purposes...
...15) He organized a movement in 1916 for Americanization day celebrations throughout the country, and over 100 cities held citizenship celebrations as a result of the commissioner's efforts...
...I made very careful preparation to argue in the Senate whether or not railroad bonds should be embedded into the currency system of this country...
...The amendment which I had offered to require local banks to hold their reserves up to a certain point was wiped out...
...Through that gateway have poured the greatest number of men and women and children from Europe who have peopled this great republic, tilled its fields, opened its mines, established its factories and made them productive, made its laws, elected its public servants, and created here a nation distinctive and great in its achievements and more distinctive and great in its promises...
...If adopted, this amendment would be the ground upon which the conferees could stand and write into the bill the Taylor system, rejected in the other House and rejected by a decisive vote in the Senate...
...This Congressman was irresponsible because he was privileged to make the most unfounded accusations against any public or private citizen without any responsibility in a court of law or in any other tribunal for his statements...
...We were near the time of adjournment...
...13) He worked in co-operation with the board of education of New York for the opening of the night schools for the education of adult aliens...
...The non-foreign press of New York has been almost continuous in its approval of his administration and the many changes and improvements which he has brought about...
...To have charge at this gateway and to safeguard the rights of the people already here and to safeguard in equal measure the rights and interests of the new workers and citizens and their families, President Wilson appointed Frederic C. Howe...
...and I contended, sir, that there should be a railroad valuation, so that the people of the country might know what was behind the railroad bonds and stocks...
...What do you thing I found...
...He has served the immigrants...
...He secured an increase in hospital charges to steamship companies which has increased the earnings of the hospitals by approximately $100,000...
...It had been accepted on the floor...
...The provision with respect to the officials of the bank using the money of the depositors was gone out of the bill...
...PRESIDENT, as an humble member of this body I had some interest in that legislation...
...I photographed the Record of the congressional proceedings of that night, and I have preserved the photograph and have published it...
...no public servant who "steps on the toes" of takers of profit where there should be no profit...
...A "joker" is thoroughly dishonest...
...One of them I recall with distinctness, and there is not a Senator on this floor who at this moment will not say that it was of vital importance...
...The acceptance of the amendments shortened debate...
...The papers announced that there would be no legislation upon this subject...
...WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE...
...There was a standard imposed with regard to what the railroads had been able to exact from the public as a dividend on the stocks...
...H) He made a number of studies at the request of the department as to means for increasing the efficiency and the rating of the employees...
...For this, Mr...
...So that when we came to consider financial legislation in 1908 to correct these evils and to protect the reserves, the keeping of the reserves in the local banks was one of the burning questions...
...6) He investigated and brought about many reforms in the protection of the aliens en route from Ellis Island, both at Jersey City and along the route...
...When the strain of that panic came upon the country, New York had the money of the country banks...
...Howe had done, and which had been approved by the Secretary of Labor, were misrepresented in themselves and distorted from the surrounding facts and conditions which inspired or compelled them...
...He has served constructive democracy...
...NO man in public OR private life who has stopped exploitation by greed OF THE poor and UNsophisticated immigrants AS commissioner HOWE HAS STOPPED IT COULD ESCAPE SUCH AN ATTACK...
...Now that Emergency Currency bill contained a provision that railroad bonds—mark the scope of it—should be accepted by the Treasury Department as a basis for issuing emergency currency...
...He has made the property rights within his jurisdiction get in line with human rights...
...Aldrich) rose in his place and ACCEPTED those amendments one after another...
...The report of Secretary Wilson and Solicitor Densmore, adopted unanimously by the Committee of Congress, after inquiry, proved that a notable condition of moral cleanliness prevailed when it was considered that the exigencies of the European war and the impossibility of deporting many of the undesirables had crowded the Island's grounds, hospitals and detention rooms far beyond any provision that had been made for ordinary or foreseen occasions...
...It was one of those appointments, like the appointment of Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court, that was hailed with joy everywhere among the plain people...
...Time was of the essence of that situation...
...I determined that it should not pass this body if I could help it...
...President, I made weeks and months of preparation to discuss that bond proposition in the Senate, and twenty minutes before I arose on the floor to make my attack upon it, the Senator from Rhode Island took the wind all out of my sails by announcing the withdrawal of that proposition from the bill...
...The date had not been set, but Senators know that we are sometimes nearly ready to adjourn before the resolution for adjournment is agreed upon by the two Houses...
...12) He greatly increased the output of the Division of Statistics and brought about a complete change in the filing system...
...Howe's recommendations were that the contract, involving the expenditure of one-half million dollars a year, in time of normal immigration and being very profitable, should not be renewed, and that, instead, the authorities at Ellis Island should purchase the food and prepare and supply it to the immigrants at cost...
...For this, unfounded rumors of "immorality" among the thousands of men and women of all nationalities who are detained at the Island were misstated as facts...
...WHEN one considers that the very first "industrial relations" with which the immigrants come in contact are the industrious activities of big and little interests to take their money awAy from them, it is easier to estimate the fine quality of public service that Frederic C. Howe has given...
...Howe himself and the Department of Labor...
...The acts of kindness and humanity and necessary common sense in the emergency which Mr...
...This trick is to be found only if you examine closely the system by which "conferees" from both the House and the Senate are appointed to adjust differences between the two houses on any measure of legislation...
...I argued the bond proposition just the same, and predicted thai when the conference report came in, the railroad bonds would be in the bill as a basis of currency issue...
...Out of the Conference committee will come a proposition that has almost no relation to the opinion expressed by the other House or the opinion expressed by the Senate when the original measure was under consideration...
...The conferees met...
...President, that the revered Senator from Georgia, Senator Bacon, arose in his place the day after it had been perpetrated, and said that he wished to go on record as repudiating the methods by which the bill had passed...
...The great centralized banking institutions refused to respond to the legitimate demands of the local bankers and return these reserves to meet the commercial demands of the different localities...
...See "La Follette's Magazine" for August, 1916...
...Interest rates increased...
...8) He brought about a re-organization of the purchasing of supplies for the hospitals at a great saving and improvement in the service...
...Senators, I got a bad reputation in this body and all over the country for talking interminably because of the righteous indignation which that report aroused in me...
...We had just gone through the great so-called panic of 1907—a panic which I have always considered was artificial...
...3) He reduced, in response to war conditions, the operating salary costs of the Ellis Island station by approximately $100,000 a year...
...I offered an amendment to compel the retaining of a certain measure of those reserves in the local banks...
...but legal processes are well understood...
...THE HISTORY of the struggle between the conferees in that matter is interesting...
...Not more than four daYs before we adjourned I was startled by a morning-paper announcement that the conferees had reached an agreement...
...5) He secured the co-operation of the commissioner of police to clean up the conditions which surrounded the barge office, and by so doing protected the incoming immigrants at New York from the individuals who had previously preyed upon them...
...That is a process sometimes resorted to by gentlemen in charge of bills...
...I took the floor...
...In this instance a radical change was made in a legislative policy that had been pursued by this government for generations...
...The Senator from Rhode Island, in charge of the bill, rose and said: "That is a very proper amendment, and I accept it...
...Senator La Follette's description and condemnation of Legislation by Conference follows: MR PRESIDENT (said Mr...
...Every Senator knows that when a conference report comes in, particularly in the latter days of a session, its DETAILS receive no consideration...
...IT NOT ONLY MADE RAILROAD BONDS BUT RAILROAD STOCKS A BASIS FOR CURRENCY ISSUE...
...In that panic the reserves of the local banks had been drawn from these banks to New York City, Chicago, and one or two other centers of specu-lative finance...
...Howe's appointment gave the chiefest satisfaction...
...The commissioner found that the hospitals were losing over $100,-000 a year, which loss was being paid by the Government for the benefit of the steamship companies...
...That they were misstated was proved by an investigation begun at once by the Committee on Immigration of the House of Representatives, co-operated with by Mr...
...THE finest and greatest proof that in his place of trust at Ellis Island Frederic C. Howe vindicated and upheld the national and international reputation he had earned as a writer of fundamental democracy and as an official and unofficial servant in action of the public has been given lately by a member of Congress, named W. S. Bennet, of New York...
...The law's delay prevents them from resorting, in a situation like that, to legal redress...
...Propositions, which when tested by debate, had been promptly withdrawn, were restored in the conference bill...
...He has advanced the ideal of a public service that holds an even hand for fair play and honesty...
...This system should be thoroughly understood by every voter...
...And to stop it I spoke for nineteen consecutive hours...
...He did that with many amendments that I offered...
...This new proposition may be embodied in a report eovering scores of pages...
...And so, I say, IT LIES WITH THE CONFEREES TO MAKE OUR LEGISLATION...
...Maybe one single item in a conference report will be taken up and discussed...
...The bill was passed...
...I wrote the bankers and the business men in Wisconsin: "We are told in the press, and it is the understanding in both bodies, that there will be no legislation at all...
...The then Senator from Rhode Island (Mr...
...and that was to be the onlt guide of the Secretary of the Treasury...
...President, a system of rules giving into the hands of a conference the power to make legislation is destructive of democracy...
...Legislation about which there is a wide difference of opinion between this legislative body and the one at the other end of the Capitol goes to conference...
...That is New York's great port of entry for immigrants...
...President, you can see that that was an India-rubber proposition...
...Our work upon this floor and the work of our associates at the other end of the Capitol is supposed to represent public opinion and the interests of the great masses of this country...
...It was directed at the alleged lack of kindness and consideration to incoming aliens...
...I wonder if they did not,—as I know I did, write to hundreds and, I think, thousands of business men in Wisconsin and elsewhere who addressed me upon the subject...
...9) He made an investigation of the conditions under which landing of first and second cabin aliens were made at the various piers around New York, and ended many abuses and losses to which the aliens were exposed...
...I HOPE THAT AS A MEMBER OF THIS BODY I SHALL LIVE TO SEE THE RULES WITH RESPECT TO CONFERENCE REPORTS SO CHANGED THAT IT WILL NOT BE POSSIBLE FOR TWO OR THREE MEN TO DICTATE AND PUT THROUGH LEGISLATION...
...No standard was prescribed as to what was back of the bonds—that is, no vital, thorough-going, economic standard...
...It has to consider and to accept or reject the report AS A WHOLE...
...Among all informed and forward-looking people, and especially among the producers and toilers, many of whom had passed through Ellis Island and knew from experience what was wrong with it and what should be made right with it, Mr...
...but, Mr...
...When the Emergency Currency bill was pending in the Senate in 1908, I offered many amendments to it...
...Howe was assailed...
...It had printed the results of its investigations in forty-two volumes that nobody ever read...
...It is resorted to on every possible occasion by privileged interests that wish to destroy the effect of a good law demanded by public opinion...
...but, Mr...
...The "Beast" Growls By DANTE BARTON THE industrial relations for millions of American citizens and workers begin at Ellis Island...
...It was made in a conference report and put through the Senate without a suggestion to the Senate as to its awful import...
...that their only restraint or limitation was the market which they could find for the bonds...
...I got that conference report as quickly as I could...
...EVER since I came Into the Senate, I had insisted that there was no uncertainty about the value of railroad bonds...
...It was pretty well understood that the adjournment of the session was at hand...
...Local demands called for the return of the reserves to the country banks...
Vol. 8 • September 1916 • No. 9
