The Proud Tower (23 page)

The system Speaker Reed had decided to challenge was known as the silent—or disappearing—quorum. It was a practice whereby the minority party could prevent any legislation obnoxious to it by refusing a quorum, that is, by demanding a roll call and then remaining silent when their names were called. Since the rules prescribed that a member’s presence was established only by a viva voce reply to the roll, and since it required a majority of the whole to constitute a quorum, the silent filibuster could effectively stop the House from doing business.

The recent election of 1888 had been a Republican victory in which for the first time in sixteen years one party controlled both Executive and Congress. But by barely a hair. The dour Benjamin Harrison was a minority President who had lost to Cleveland in popular vote and sat on that unstable throne so oddly carpentered by the electoral college system. The Republican majority in the House of 168–160 was wafer-thin, only three more than a quorum, which was set at 165. With this the Republicans faced the task of enacting two major pieces of party legislation, the Mills Bill for revising the tariff and the Force Bill directed against the poll tax and other Southern devices to keep the Negroes from voting. The Democrats were prepared to obstruct this legislation and also to prevent a vote on the seating of four Republicans, two of them Negroes, in contested elections from Southern districts.

To Reed the issue was survival of representative government. If the Democrats could prevent that legislation which the Republicans by virtue of their electoral victory could rightfully expect to enact, they would in effect be setting aside the verdict of the election. The rights of the minority, he believed, were preserved by freedom to debate and to vote but when the minority was able to frustrate action by the majority, “it becomes a tyranny.” He believed that legislation, not merely deliberation, was the business of Congress. The duty of the Speaker to his party and country was to see that that business was accomplished, not merely to umpire debate.

The Speakership was a post of tremendous influence, still possessed of all the powers which in 1910, in the revolt against Joe Cannon, were to be transferred to the committees. Since the Speaker was ex officio Chairman of the Committee on Rules, whose two Republican and two Democratic members canceled each other out, and since he had the right to appoint all committees, the careers of members and the course of legislation depended upon his will. In Reed’s hands was now the “power with responsibility,” and notwithstanding a famous dictum, power has other effects than only to corrupt: it can also enlarge the understanding. It sometimes begets greatness. The Speaker’s office, which the Washington
Post
called “no less consequential than the Presidency,” could be the stepping stone to that ultimate peak. Reed was not the man either to miss his opportunity or to meet it feebly.

He reached his decision to attack the silent quorum, and planned his campaign, alone, partly because no one else would have thought there was a chance of success and partly because he was not sure that even his own party would support him. There were indications that they might not. Because of Reed’s known views on the silent filibuster it was clear that quorum-counting would be an issue in the new Congress.
REED WILL COUNT THEM
, predicted a headline in the Washington
Post
, and the story beneath it said that even Mr. Cannon, Reed’s closest lieutenant, was opposed to the attempt. The Democrats were manning their defences. Ex-Speaker Carlisle let it be known that any legislation enacted by a quorum which had not been established by a “recorded vote” would be taken to court as unconstitutional.

Reed, however, had satisfied himself that he would be upheld if it came to law, and on the attitude of his own party he was prepared to gamble. He shrewdly judged that the Democrats in their rage would provoke the Republicans to rally to his support. When the first of the contested elections appeared on the schedule for January 29 he was ready. As expected, the Democrats raised a cry of no quorum and demanded a roll call. It produced 163 yeas, all Republican, two less than a quorum. Reed’s moment had come. Without a flicker of expression on the great white moon face, “the largest human face I ever saw,” as a colleague described it, without any quickening of the drawling voice, he announced, “The Chair directs the Clerk to record the names of the following members present and refusing to vote,” and began reading off the names himself. Instantly, according to a reporter, “pandemonium broke loose. The storm was furious … and it is to be doubted if ever there was such wild excitement, burning indignation, scathing denunciation and really dangerous conditions as existed in the House” during the next five days. Republicans were wildly applauding, all the Democrats were “yelling and shrieking and pounding their desks” while the voice of their future Speaker, Crisp of Georgia, boomed, “I appeal! I appeal from the decision of the Chair!” The explosion was “as violent as was ever witnessed in any parliament,” a member recalled later. Unruffled, expressionless, the Speaker continued his counting, “Mr. Blanchard, Mr. Bland, Mr. Blount, Mr. Breckinridge of Arkansas, Mr. Breckinridge of Kentucky …”

Up jumped the Kentuckian, “famous for his silver hair and silver tongue.” “I deny the power of the Speaker and denounce it as revolutionary!” he called.

The resonant twang from the Chair continued unregarding, “Mr. Bullock, Mr. Bynum, Mr. Carlisle, Mr. Chipman, Mr. Clement, Mr. Covert, Mr. Crisp, Mr. Cummings”—through hisses and catcalls and cries of “Appeal!” irresistibly rolling down the alphabet—“Mr. Lawler, Mr. Lee, Mr. McAdoo, Mr. McCreary …”

“I deny your right, Mr. Speaker, to count me as present!” bellowed McCreary.

For the first time the Speaker stopped, held the hall in silence for a pause as an actor holds an audience, then blandly spoke: “The Chair is making a statement of fact that the gentleman is present. Does he deny it?”

He went on with his count, unmoved by the protests, denials, cries of “Order!” that rose to bedlam, through the
S
’s and
T
’s to the end. Then suddenly, seeming to gather all the power of his huge body, projecting all the force of his commanding personality and raising the voice which could fill any hall when he wanted, he announced, “The Chair thereupon rules that there is a quorum present within the meaning of the Constitution.”

Tumult even worse than before followed. Breckinridge of Kentucky demanded a point of order on the ground that the Chair had no right to make such a ruling. “The Chair overrules the point of order,” declared Reed coolly.

“I appeal the decision of the Chair!” shouted Breckinridge.

“I move to lay the appeal on the table,” quickly interposed an alert Republican, Payson of Illinois. As this motion, if carried, would have shut off debate, the Democrats foamed with rage. A hundred of them “were on their feet howling for recognition,” wrote a reporter. “Fighting Joe” Wheeler, the diminutive former Confederate cavalry general, unable to reach the front because of the crowded aisles, came down from the rear “leaping from desk to desk as an ibex leaps from crag to crag.” As the excitement grew wilder, the only Democrat not on his feet was a huge Representative from Texas who sat in his seat significantly whetting a bowie knife on his boot. When a Republican member said he believed “we should have debate” on such an important matter, Reed allowed it. The debate was to last four days with the Democrats fighting every inch of the way, insisting on readings of every word of the Journal, on appeals and points of order and roll calls, each of which Were met by Reed imperturbably counting off the silent members as present and evoking each time further infuriated defiance. Once Representative McKinley, striving to please as usual, inadvertently yielded the floor, and had to be prompted by Reed, “The gentleman from Ohio declines to be interrupted.”

“I decline to be interrupted,” echoed McKinley valiantly closing the breach.

As implacably at each juncture Reed counted heads and repeated his formula, “A Constitutional quorum is present to do business,” the fury and frustration of the Democrats mounted. A group breathing maledictions advanced down the aisle threatening to pull him from the Chair and for a moment it looked to a spectator “as if they intended to mob the Speaker.” Reed remained unmoved. Infected by the passion on the floor, visitors and correspondents in the galleries leaned over the railings to shake their fists at the Speaker and join in the abuse and profanity. “Decorum,” lamented a reporter, “was altogether forgotten. Members rushed madly about the floor, the scowl of battle upon their brows,… shouting in a mad torrent of eloquent invective.” They called Reed tyrant, despot and dictator, hurling epithets like stones. Among all the variants on the word “tyrant,” “czar” emerged as the favorite, embodying for its time the image of unrestrained autocracy, and as “Czar” Reed, the Speaker was known thereafter. The angrier the Democrats became, the cooler Reed remained, bulking hugely in the chair, “serene as a summer morning.” Although his secretary saw him in his private room, during an interval, gripping the desk and shaking with suppressed rage, he never gave a sign in the hall to show that the vicious abuse touched him. He maintained an iron control, “cool and determined as a highwayman,” said the New York
Times.

The secret of his self-possession, as he told a friend long afterward, was that he had his mind absolutely made up as to what he would do if the House did not sustain him. “I would simply have left the Chair and resigned the Speakership and my seat in Congress.” He had a place waiting for him for the private practice of law in Elihu Root’s New York firm, and “I had made up my mind that if political life consisted in sitting helplessly in the Speaker’s Chair and seeing the majority helpless to pass legislation, I had had enough of it and was ready to step down and out.” Coming to such a decision, he said, “you have made yourself equal to the worst” and are ready for it. This has a very “soothing” effect on the spirit.

It did more than soothe: it gave him an embedded strength which men who fear the worst, or will yield principles to avoid the worst, can never possess. It endowed him with a moral superiority over the House which members without knowing why could sense in the atmosphere.

Now the Democrats, changing their strategy, decided to absent themselves in actuality, counting on the inability of the Republicans to round up a quorum of themselves alone. As one by one the Democrats slipped out, Reed, divining their intention, ordered the doors locked. At once there followed a mad scramble to get out before the next vote. Losing “all sense of personal or official dignity,” Democrats hid under desks and behind screens. Representative Kilgore of Texas, kicking open a locked door to make his escape, made “Kilgore’s Kick” the delight of cartoonists.

On the fifth day, the Democrats absented themselves altogether and when a vote was called the Republicans were still short of a quorum. Two of their number were brought in on cots from their sickbeds. There was still one too few. One member was known to be on his way to Washington. Suddenly a door opened, and, as a reporter told it, “there was a flash of red whiskers and a voice saying, ‘One more, Mr. Speaker.’ ” Sweney of Iowa was counted in, the quorum was filled, and the vote recorded at 166–0. The battle was over. Democrats sullenly filed back to their seats. The Rules Committee reported out a new set of rules, composed, needless to say, and imposed by the Chairman. Known thereafter as “Reed’s Rules” and adopted on February 14, they provided among other things that (1) all members must vote; (2) one hundred shall constitute a quorum; (3) all present shall be counted; and (4) no dilatory motion shall be entertained and the definition of what is dilatory to be left to the judgment of the Speaker.

Five years later Theodore Roosevelt wrote that in destroying the silent filibuster, Reed’s reform was of “far greater permanent importance” than any piece of legislation it brought to enactment at the time. Reed knew this as soon as he had won. In his speech closing the Fifty-first Congress he said that “the verdict of history” was the only one worth recording and he was confident of its outcome “because we have taken here so long a stride in the direction of responsible government.”

More immediate than a verdict by history, and, indeed, then widely considered its equivalent, was a portrait by Sargent. Commissioned as a tribute to the Speaker by his Republican colleagues, it was a memorable failure. “He is supposed to be in the act of counting a quorum,” a critic observed, “but in fact has just been inveigled into biting a green persimmon.”

The death of the silent quorum was discussed in parliamentary bodies all over the world. At home it made Reed a leading political figure and obvious candidate for the Presidential nomination in 1892. But his time had not yet come, as he correctly judged, for when asked if he thought his party would nominate him, he replied, “They might do worse and I think they will.”

They did. Reed’s “czardom” was still resented and his sarcasm had not made friends. Nor did his disgust for deals, his refusal to woo the public with smiles and handshakes, or politicians with promises, enlarge his circle of supporters. The party regulars preferred to nominate the incumbent Harrison, incorruptible but sour, known as the “White House Iceberg,” whom Reed disliked with no concealment whatever. When Harrison appointed as Collector of Portland, Reed’s home town, a man Reed despised, he thereafter refused to enter the White House or meet Harrison until the day he died.

When, in 1892, the Democrats won control of the House by so large a majority that they could always assemble a quorum among themselves, they triumphantly threw out Reed’s reform. He waited for history, not without some faith, as he used to say, that “the House has more sense than anyone in it.” History did not keep him waiting long. In the next Congress, with the Democratic majority reduced by half and split over the currency and other heated issues, Reed enjoyed a delicious revenge. Over and over he demanded roll calls and when Bland of Missouri stormed against this “downright filibuster,” he countered instantly, “Downright? You mean upright.” His control over his party, as minority leader no less than as Speaker, remained total. “Gentlemen on that side blindly follow him,” Speaker Crisp said wistfully. “You will hear them privately saying, ‘Reed ought not to do that,’ or ‘This is wrong,’ but when Reed says ‘Do it,’ they all step up and do it.” When at last the Democrats had to give way, and for the sake of their own program, re-adopt his quorum-counting rule, Reed refrained from crowing. “This scene here today is a more effective address than any I could make,” he said. “I congratulate the Fifty-third Congress.”