t of a Pennsylvania protectionist, and upon the tariff reform
issue in 1883, he was defeated for the Speakership. At that time, John
G. Carlisle of Kentucky was raised to that post, while Morrison again
became chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. But Randall, now
appointed chairman of the Appropriations Committee, had so great an
influence that he was able to turn about forty Democratic votes against
the tariff bill reported by the Ways and Means Committee, thus enabling
the Republicans to kill the bill by striking out the enacting clause.

Only this practical aim, then, was in view in the reports presented by
the committee on rules. The principal feature of the majority report was
a proposal to curtail the jurisdiction of the Appropriations Committee
by transferring to other committees five of the eleven regular
appropriation bills. What, from the constitutional point of view, would
appear to be the main question--the recovery by the House of its freedom
of action--was hardly noticed in the report or in the debates which
followed. Heretofore, the rules had allotted certain periods to general
business; now, the majority report somewhat enlarged these periods and
stipulated that no committee should bring more than one proposal before
the House until all other committees had had their turn. This provision
might have been somewhat more effective had it been accompanied by a
revision of the list of committees such as was proposed by William M.
Springer. He pointed out that there were a number of committees "that
have no business to transact or business so trifling and unimportant as
to make it unnecessary to have standing committees upon such subjects";
he proposed to abolish twenty-one of these committees and to create four
new ones to take their place; he showed that "if we allow these twenty
useless committees to be again put on our list, to be called regularly
in the morning hour... forty-two days will be consumed in calling these
committees"; and, finally, he pointed out that the change would effect a
saving since it would "do away with sixteen committee clerkships."

This saving was, in fact, fatal to the success of Springer's proposal,
since it meant the extinction of so many sinecures bestowed through
congressional favor. In the end, Springer reduced his proposed change to
the creation of one general committee on public expenditures to take the
place of eight committees on departmental expenditures. It was notor