tor Dolliver, of Iowa. The leading Democrat on the
committee was Senator Tillman, of South Carolina, with whom I was not on
good terms, because I had been obliged to cancel an invitation to him to
dine at the White House on account of his having made a personal assault
in the Senate Chamber on his colleague from South Carolina; and later I
had to take action against him on account of his conduct in connection
with certain land matters. Senator Tillman favored the bill. The
Republican majority in the committee under Senator Aldrich, when they
acted adversely on the bill, turned it over to Senator Tillman, thereby
making him its sponsor. The object was to create what it was hoped would
be an impossible situation in view of the relations between Senator
Tillman and myself. I regarded the action as simply childish. It was a
curious instance of how able and astute men sometimes commit blunders
because of sheer inability to understand intensity of disinterested
motive in others. I did not care a rap about Mr. Tillman's getting
credit for the bill, or having charge of it. I was delighted to go with
him or with any one else just so long as he was traveling in my way--and
no longer.

There was another amusing incident in connection with the passage of the
bill. All the wise friends of the effort to secure Governmental control
of corporations know that this Government control must be exercised
through administrative and not judicial officers if it is to be
effective. Everything possible should be done to minimize the chance
of appealing from the decisions of the administrative officer to the
courts. But it is not possible Constitutionally, and probably would not
be desirable anyhow, completely to abolish the appeal. Unwise zealots
wished to make the effort totally to abolish the appeal in connection
with the Hepburn Bill. Representatives of the special interests wished
to extend the appeal to include what it ought not to include. Between
stood a number of men whose votes would mean the passage of, or the
failure to pass, the bill, and who were not inclined towards either
side. Three or four substantially identical amendments were proposed,
and we then suddenly found ourselves face to face with an absurd
situation. The good men who were willing to go with us but had
conservative misgivings about the ultra-radicals would not accept a good
amendment if one of the latter proposed it; and the radicals would not
accept their own amendm