The Taming of the House

FORGE OF DEMOCRACY (496 pp.)--Neil MacNeil--McKay ($6.75).

De Tocqueville, who liked much of what he saw in America, described the House of Representatives as a place of "vulgar demeanor," without a single "man of celebrity." Lord Bryce complained that it made as much noise as "waves in a squall." Dickens scoffed that not even "steady, old chewers" in the House could hit a spittoon. And 19th century Americans generally referred to the House as the "Bear Garden." But the House has improved with age, writes Neil MacNeil, TIME'S chief congressional correspondent, in this entertaining account of its workings and its history.

Grant on a Cloud. In the early House, many members were fresh from the frontier and settled their political squabbles in the ways they knew best--with curses, fists and duels. On one memorable occasion, 30 pistols were whipped out during debate on the floor. "Kicking-Buck" Kilgore of Texas once booted down a locked door to escape a quorum call. "Tim" Campbell of Tammany threw an arm around President Cleveland, who had complained that a bill he favored was unconstitutional, and growled: "What's the Constitution between friends?" Davy Crockett campaigned for the House on the basis of shooting 109 bears in a year (nonsense, scoffed an opponent, Davy could not count that high).

The congressional investigations of the last century make even the antics of Martin Dies seem tame. During the Grant Administration, the Democratic-controlled Judiciary Committee called up a grocer who testified that the President had seduced his sister in his own home. The committee gleefully publicized the story until the grocer declared that President Grant arrived at his house aboard a cloud. When a witness was testifying in an investigation of the Treasury Department in 1837, a Congressman addressed the committee chairman: "I wish you would inform this witness that he is not to insult me in his answers. If he does, I will take his life on the spot." The chairman, who was naturally carrying a revolver, sympathized. "I watched the motion of [the witness'] right arm, and had it moved one inch, he had died on the spot. This was my determination."

Mutiny on the Floor. To control this rambunctious House, the Speaker had to be tougher than the members, and usually he was. Until Woodrow Wilson presented his own program to Congress, the Speaker decided what bills would be introduced, and often refused even to discuss them with the President. "Gentlemen," Speaker Thomas Reed announced when he was ready to offer a bill, "we have decided to perpetrate the following outrage."

Gradually the members of the House learned to think for themselves. Rotating Representatives every two years went out of fashion in most states; seniority provided members with an expertise that could not easily be challenged anywhere else in the Government. In 1910 the members rebelled against Speaker Joe Cannon, and much of his enormous power was shifted to various committees. These committees have occasionally become tyrants in their own right and bottled up bills they did not like. Rules Committee Chairman Adolph Sabath once faked a heart attack when pressure was put on him to put a resolution to a vote. But today's House operates with much less rancor than in the past and more give-and-take. Said Sam Rayburn, one of the greatest Speakers, and yet one of the mildest: "The old day of pounding the desk and giving people hell is gone. We're all grown up now. A man's got to lead by persuasion and kindness and the best reason."

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