smilingly described the committee as consisting of the Speaker and two assistants, a pleasant way of saying that the committee was his instrument to govern the House. His direct control of the Committee on Rules rounds out his powers as an autocrat of the popular chamber.

VII A. And yet the word autocrat has really no place in our political vocabulary, if we are to use words of reality and not words of extravagance. The extraordinary power of the Speaker is not personal. He is in no proper sense of the word an autocrat. He is the instrument, as well as the leader, of the majority in controlling the processes of the House. He is obeyed because the majority chooses to be governed thus. The rules are of its own making, and it can unmake them when it pleases. It can override the Speaker's decisions, too, and correct its presiding officer as every other assembly can. It has simply found it most convenient to put itself in the Speaker's hands, its object being efficiency, not debate.

VII B. And yet it is also an exaggeration to say that House bills go through as the committees propose, practically without debate. Some measures it is clearly in the interest of the party no less than of the public to discuss with some fulness. Many financial measures in particular are debated with a good deal of thoroughness, and most matters that have already attracted public attention. Not everything is left to the operation of the rules, the chances of the calendar, and the dictation of the Speaker and his two assistants. The Committee on Rules may be counted on to arrange for debates upon the important bills as well as for putting unimportant bills out of the way.

VIII. And standing over all is the party caucus, the outside conference of the members of the majority, to whose conclusions the Speaker himself is subject, and to which members can appeal whenever they think the Speaker too irresponsible, too arbitrary, toc masterful, too little heedful of the opinions prevalent on the floor among the rank and file. The caucus is an established and much respected piece of party machinery, and what the party has not the organization to decide on the floor of the assembly

itself it decides in this conference outside the House.

Members

who do not wish to be bound by decisions of the caucus can refuse to attend it; but that is a very serious breach of party discipline and may get the men who venture upon it the unpleasant reputation of disloyalty. Members who wish to maintain their standing in the party are expected to attend; and those who attend are expected to abide by the decisions of the conference. It is a thoroughgoing means of maintaining party unity. Caucuses are free conferences, where a man may say what he pleases; but they are held behind closed doors, and it is usually made a matter of honorable punctilio not to speak outside of the dissensions their debates may have disclosed.

IX. It is thus that the House has made itself “efficient." Its ideal is the transaction of business. It is as much afraid of becoming a talking shop as Mr. Carlyle could have wished it to be. If it must talk, it talks in sections, in its committee rooms, not in public on the floor of the chamber itself. The Committee rooms are private. No one has the right to enter them except by express permission of the committees themselves. Not infrequently committees do hold formal public hearings with regard to certain bills, inviting all whose interests are affected to be represented and present their views either for or against the proposed legislation. But such hearings are recognized as exceptional, not of right, and as a rule the public hears nothing of the arguments which have induced any committee to make its particular recommendations to the House. The formal explanations of the chairman of a committee, made upon the floor of the House, contain few of the elements of contested opinion which undoubtedly showed themselves plainly enough in the private conference of the committee.

X. For each committee is a miniature House. The minority is accorded representation upon it in proportion to its numerical strength in the House. In every committee, therefore, there are men representing both party views, and it sometimes happens that the arguments of the minority members are very influential in shaping reports made upon measures concerning which no sharp party lines have been drawn. With regard to matters

upon which the majority is known to have taken a definite position before the constituencies the majority members of a committee will of course insist upon having their own way. They are apt to be in frequent consultation with the Speaker about them. But with regard to measures on which no party issue has been made up they are willing on occasion to give a good deal of weight to the opinions of their minority colleagues. There is a very easy and amicable relation between majority and minority in the committees, and it will often happen that in committees which have to deal with highly technical matters, like manufactures or banking or naval construction or the regulation of judicial procedure, or with matters involved in precedent and to be understood only in the light of somewhat extended and intimate experience, like foreign affairs, members of the minority of long service in the House and of long familiarity with the subject-matter under discussion will in fact in no small degree guide and dominate the committees to which they have been assigned. Business is more like business, because less formal and less touched with party feeling in the committee rooms than on the floor of the House.

XI. The minority has its own party organization like that of the majority its formally chosen leader for the floor, its caucus to secure common counsel. It is, indeed, usually less thoroughly disciplined than the majority, because it is in opposition, not in power, and can afford to allow its members freer play in choosing what they shall individually do and say. But its organization suffices to draw its forces together for common action when any matter of real party significance comes to the surface and the country expects it to put itself on record; and it is ready, at very short notice, to turn itself into an organization as complete and powerful as that of the majority, should the elections favor it and its leader become Speaker.

XII. All lines of analysis come back to the Speaker, whether you speak of the organization or of the action and political power of the House. Such an organization, so systematized and so concentrated, has of course made the House of Representatives one of the most powerful pieces of our whole governmental machinery,

and its Speaker, in whom its power is centred and summed up, has come to be regarded as the greatest figure in our complex system, next to the President himself. The whole powerful machinery of the great popular chamber is at his disposal, and all the country knows how effectually he can use it. Whatever may be the influence and importance of the Senate, its energies are not centred in any one man. There is no senator who sums up in himself the power of a great organ of government. The leaders of the Senate deal in all counsel with the other chamber with regard to legislative business with this single leader, this impersonation of the House. So do also the President and the members of the cabinet. As national leader of his party, the President must reckon always with the guide and master of the House, without whose approval and consent it is practically impossible to get any legislative measure adopted. Measures which are to prosper must have his countenance and support. Members of the cabinet must study his views and purposes, if they are to obtain the appropriations they desire or to see measures brought to a happy and successful issue which they deem necessary to the administration of their departments. One might sum up the active elements of our government as consisting of the President, with all his sweep of powers; the Speaker of the House, with all that he represents as spokesman of the party majority in the popular chamber, with its singularly effective machinery at his disposal; and the talkative, debating Senate, guided no doubt by a few influential and trusted members, but a council, not an organization.

MINE-HELMETS 1

JOSEPH HUSBAND

THE gases which filled the mine consisted principally of carbon monoxide, or white-damp, and carbon dioxide, or black-damp, with a small additional percentage of other gases. White

1 From A Year in a Coal Mine. Houghton Mifflin & Company, 1912. Reprinted by permission.

damp is the gas most feared by the miners, for its properties render it difficult to detect, inasmuch as it is tasteless, odorless, and colorless, and when mixed in the proportion of about one part gas to nine parts air is called "fire-damp," and becomes explosive to a degree hard to realize unless one has seen its effects. Black-damp, unlike white-damp, is heavier than air: a non-explosive gas which may be detected by its peculiar odor. Again, unlike the other, its effect is to suffocate and extinguish fire. This gas is so heavy and moves with such a sluggish flow that, occasionally, when miners have been trapped in a mine following an explosion and have detected the black-damp creeping in upon them by its smell, they have been able to stop its advance by erecting dams or barricades along the floor, building them higher as the volume of gas increased, and keeping the air within their little enclosure comparatively clear by rude. improvised fans. Following an explosion, these two gases become mingled and form a mixed gas possessing all the dreaded qualities of each, which is known as " after-damp," and it is this mixture of gases which destroys any life that may remain following a mine disaster.

To contend with these almost impossible conditions, it was determined to make the descent equipped with air-tight helmets, somewhat resembling in appearance those used by deep-sea divers. This ingenious device, which enables a man to exist under such conditions and to conduct investigations for a period of two hours, consists of a steel headpiece completely covering the fore part of the head and leaving the ears exposed, made air-tight by means of a pneumatic washer which passes in a circle around the top of the head and down each side of the face in front of the ears, connecting under the chin. This washer is inflated as soon as the helmet is adjusted, and pressing out closely against the steel shell of the helmet on one side, conforms closely to the contours of the head on the other, leaving the ears exposed. In the front of each helmet is a round bull's-eye of heavy mica, protected by steel rods; and below the bull'seye, an inch below the mouth, is the main valve which is closed immediately before the man enters the poisoned atmosphere.