Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 58, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1920 — United States Senate Slave to Hoary Tradition, Custom and Precedent. [ARTICLE]

United States Senate Slave to Hoary Tradition, Custom and Precedent.

By SENATOR DAVIS ELKINS

of West Virginia.

Mv experience and observations as a member of the United States senate have convinced me that the rules of that body should be changed to conform with our modern methods of doing business expeditiously. Ihe senate is hampered in prompt and efficient action quickly responsive to the wishes of the American people by antiquated methods. It is a slave to hoary traditions, custom and precedent. _ —. The senate wastes time, doesn’t function efficiently, is almost always behind in registering public sentiment, and is unbusinesslike and entirely out of step with modern methods, all because it has tied itself helplessly with a set of rules which are out of date and because it blindly worships outworn, inefficient and impractical customs, precedents and practices. I think that the senate should come to and wake upj and get itself on a modem business foundation. ‘lt needs to be made over so as to function efficiently and promptly respond to the will of the people, whose servant it is. The place to make that beginning is on its aged and moss-covered, rules.