Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1882 — KEIFER’S COMMITTEES. [ARTICLE]

KEIFER’S COMMITTEES.

Experience and Fitness Ignored— Plans Being Discussed for Limiting the Speaker’s Powers. • [From the Chicago Times,] 2he more Mr. Keifer’s committees are examined, the more unsatisfactory the list is found to be. Both among the Democrats and Republicans, men of experience and prominence are relegated to obscurity, so far as the Speaker of the House can effect it. The fact that Mr. Kasson has no Chairmanship, and that Mr. Hewitt, of New York, one of the best-informed men in the country on finance, commerce and manufactures, is sentenced to two years in the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds is but a sample of the treatment many prominent members have received. Geographically the committees appear worse than they do personally. As there are two or three times as many States as there are places on each committee, one State cannot get two or three places on the same committee without a manifest injustice to others, and in so large a country as this, with diverse interests in different sections, it is of importance that the representation of the States on the committees should be as nearly etpial as circumstances will permit. Yet Pennsylvania has three places on the Ways and Means Committee, New York has three on the Appropriations Committee, three places on the Committee on Territories, three places on the Pacific Railroad Committee, three places on the Claims Committee, and three places on the committee on the law regulating the election of President and Vice President, and Tennessee has three places on the Committee on Invalid Pensions. Here are seven Cases where three places on a committee are given to one State, and in five cases that State is New York. Of cases where a State, has two places on a committee there are no end. Ohio has two each on the following committees: Appropriations, Territories, Railroads and Canals, Pacific Railroads, Patents, Invalid Pensions, and Civil Service. New York has two places each cm seven committees. Pennsylvania has two places each on eight committees. This shows the predominance given to those three States, for other States rarely get two places apiece on a committee. On the Appropriation Committee, Ohio and New York have five places; in the Naval Committee, Massachusetts and New Jersey have four; on Territories, New York and Ohio have five; on Railroads and Canals, Pennsylvania and Ohio have four; on Manufactures, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey have six; on Patents, Ohio and New York have four; on Invalid Pensions, Tennessee, Ohio and New York have seven; on the Census, New York, Indiana and Virginia have six places; on the committee on the law regulating the election of President and Vice President, New York and Pennsylvania have five places; and so on. Mr. Keifer seems to think that Congressmen from Now York, Pennsylvania and Ohio are school-girls who are afraid to find themselves unaccompanied, and so he has appointed them in couples and trios. The fact that in the Committee on Commerce the representatives of commercial centers are conspicuous by their absence is of a piece with the placing of three Tennesseeans on the Committee on Invalid Pensions, and three New Yorkers on the Committee on Territories. [Washington Telegram.] The House committees continue to be a most interesting subject here. The Democrats are very much disgusted at their assignments, as a rule. Atkins, formerly Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, is put after Cox and Blackburn. Money, of Mississippi, who was Chairman of the Postoffice Committee of the last Conghess, is made second among Dem ocratsr—Springer, who has never served on the committee, being placed ahead of him. Whitthorne, who was Chairman of the Coinmittee on Naval Affairs, is not on that committee. Atkins threatens to refuse, to serve on the Appropriations and to suggest to the Speaker that he appoint a Pennsylvania member in his (Atkins’) place. Money talfis of declining to serve on the Postoffice Committee. In their disappointment and indignation, some of the members allege that the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and other corporations wielded considerable influence in the formation of the committees. The Democrats say the Elections Committee is in the interest of the Republican contestants for seats from the South. They admit that there are several broad-minded Republicans on the committee, but maintain that Pettibone, of Tennessee; Jones, of Texas, and Paul, of Virginia—one a Southern Republican, one a Greenbacker and one a Readjuster—ought not to have been put in a position to pass judgment upon contested cases from the South. The Democratic opinion of these men is that they will be governed, more by prejudice than by anything else. Ope of the most prominent Democrats in the House says: “We regard the placing of Pettibone, Jones and Paul on the Election Committee as an indication that the Republicans intend to follow the advice given by soma of their organs, and increase their majority by summarily unseating Democrats vjiere the seats are contested. Now, formne, I am willing to give every couteded, case a fair, impartial apd judicial hearing. < My votes in the last three Congresses show that I have not been.governed by*partisauship in passing judgment upon* the contested casea The Democrats ‘will not submit to any outrage at> tiia>Muds of the Election Committee. We-hvill filibuster until'the tOrirfof the flirtyseventh Congress expires first. That is' our answer ; 'to the placing tit *tferee prejudiced men on the-Hi* ct ion Oettmittee because it w known they would vote to unseat every fcjoutjiqni no matter what the merits of the case might be.” * J There has beerir.o much dissatisfaction expressed by members over the make-up of the committees that it is not impgobable that a move will be made sometime this winter looking to more closely limiting and defining the duties of the Speaker of the House. Quite a number of mem; hers are in favor of taking away from the Speaker the arbitrary (power of appoint- , ing committees and arranging for their formation astir the Senate plan, through a caucus of the’npyorityi The Speaker’s power has grown to such extensive ptoEortions during the last ten years that e has become almost the sole arbitrator of legislation in the House. His will-at nearly any time can defeat legislation or shape it, and through nis make-up of the committees he is the- dictator of the policy of the majority. Then through the revision of the rules the Speaker has the most extraordinary powers, _ Nobody

pretends to understand the rules. The construction of them is almost purely abitrary.