arty to escape
responsibility, since it can claim that its failure to satisfy the
popular demand has been due to the opposition of the minority in the
various committees, which has made concession and compromise necessary.

"The deliberations of committees," as Bryce says, "are usually secret.
Evidence is frequently taken with open doors, but the newspapers do not
report it, unless the matter excite public interest; and even the
decisions arrived at are often noticed in the briefest way. It is out of
order to canvass the proceedings of a committee in the House until they
have been formally reported to it; and the report submitted does not
usually state how the members have voted, or contain more than a very
curt outline of what has passed. No member speaking in the House is
entitled to reveal anything further."[148]

A system better adapted to the purposes of the lobbyist could not be
devised. "It gives facilities for the exercise of underhand and even
corrupt influence. In a small committee the voice of each member is well
worth securing, and may be secured with little danger of a public
scandal. The press can not, even when the doors of committee rooms stand
open, report the proceedings of fifty bodies; the eye of the nation can
not follow and mark what goes on within them; while the subsequent
proceedings in the House are too hurried to permit a ripping up there
of suspicious bargains struck in the purlieus of the Capital, and
fulfilled by votes given in a committee."[149]

A system which puts the power to control legislation in the hands of
these small independent bodies and at the same time shields them so
largely against publicity affords ample opportunity for railway and
other corporate interests to exercise a controlling influence upon
legislation.

This subdivision of the legislative power of the House and its
distribution among many small, irresponsible bodies precludes the
possibility of any effective party control over legislation. And since
the majority in the House can not control its own agents there can be no
effective party responsibility. To ensure responsibility the party in
the majority must act as a unit and be opposed by an active and united
minority. But our committee system disintegrates both the majority and
the minority.

Another practice which has augmented the authority and at the same time
diminished the responsibility of the committees is the hurried manner in
which the House disposes