Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1915 — WORDS KILL DILLS [ARTICLE]

WORDS KILL DILLS

Tactics Often Used in Senate to Defeat Measure. If Bhlp Purchase BUI Falls of Passage the Result May Come From Inter* esting Process of Talking' Bill to Death.

By EDWARD B. CLARK.

(Staff Correspondent Western Newspaper Union,) Washington.—ls the ship purchase bill which the administration desires to have passed shall fail of passage, the result will come from the killing process known as talking a bill to death. Now the senators who sue* ceed in defeating a bill by debating it at extreme length, thus preventing it from coming to a vote, always say that they simply are giving the proposed legislation proper discussion. It is the members favorable to the measure who Insist that the bill which they support is being “talked to death.” The records of congress show that both big parties have had a share in the work of smothering bills to death with words. There are some marked instances of this course of procedure in the United States senate. The house members cannot talk a bill to death, because there is a day set for a vote and the vote must come. In the senate, however, only by unanimous consent can r. day be set for a vote. So it is that unless the rules are changed, which is not at all likely, future bills can be talked to death just as bills of the past have met the same fate. Some years ago Senator Thomas H. Carter of Montana, now deceased, talked a river and harbor appropriation bill into Its grave. It is possible to talk bills to death in the senate both at the short and the long sesions, but the chances of doing it of course are greater at the short seslon, when congress must adjourn to March 4. At a long session the date of adjournment can be set forward and the talking members can be tired out, but if they show great strength of purpose and of lungs, they can worry the proponents of the bill by postponing the day of adjournment, and so frequently a bill’s friends surrender and allow adjournment to come and the bill which they favor to die. During the Roosevelt admlnistra tion Senators Stone of Missouri and Gore of Oklahoma, Democrats, and Senator La Follette of Wisconsin, Republican, tried to talk the Aldrich emergency currency bill to death. The three talked day and night, relieving one another as the speaker became exhausted. Senator Gore is blind, and after talking for hours he sat down, thinking that Senator Stone was in the the chamber and ready to relieve him. Both Senators Stone and La FOllette were absent taking a rest at the time, and, seizing advantage of the situation, the advocates of the measure succeeded in forcing a vote and the bill was adopted.