ntic
steamship companies were employing unscrupulous brokers to procure
emigrants for America, the brokerage being from three to five dollars
per head, and that most emigrants were of a class utterly unfitted for
citizenship.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
Thomas B. Reed.

The President's urgency in this matter had little effect, the attention
of Congress being early diverted to other subjects. Three great measures
mainly embodied the Republican policy--the Federal Elections Bill, the
McKinley Tariff Bill, and the Dependent Pensions Bill.

As Speaker of the House, Hon. Thomas B. Reed, of Maine, put through
certain parliamentary innovations necessary to enact the party's will.
He declined to entertain dilatory motions. More important, he ordered
the clerk to register as "present and not voting," those whom he saw
endeavoring by stubborn silence to break a quorum. A majority being the
constitutional quorum, theretofore, unless a majority answered to their
names upon roll-call, no majority appeared of record, although the
sergeant-at-arms was empowered to compel the presence of every member.
As the traditional safeguard of minorities and as a compressed airbrake
on majority action, silence became more powerful than words. Under the
Reed theory, since adopted, that the House may, through its Speaker,
determine in its own way the presence of a quorum, the Speaker's or the
clerk's eye was substituted for the voice of any member in demonstrating
such member's presence.

Many, not all Democrats, opposed the Reed policy as arbitrary. Mr.
Evarts is said to have remarked, "Reed, you seem to think a deliberative
body like a woman; if it deliberates, it is lost." On the "yeas and
nays" or at any roll-call some would dodge out of sight, others break
for the doors only to find them closed. A Texas member kicked down a
door to make good his escape. Yet, having calculated the scope of his
authority, Mr. Reed coolly continued to count and declare quorums
whenever such were present. The Democratic majority of 1893 transferred
this newly discovered prerogative of the Speaker, where possible, to
tellers. Now and then they employed it as artillery to fire at Mr. Reed
himself, but he each time received the shot with smiles.

The cause for which the counting of quorums was invoked made it doubly
odious to Democratic members. To restore the suffrage to southern
negroes the Republicans proposed federal supervision of federal
elections. Th