Oyster & Gag

A healthy U. S. oyster bears about 16,000,000 young. Biologists compute that if all the offspring of a single oyster should survive they would confuse the solar system. Within five generations one oyster's offspring, closely packed together, would bulk eight times as large as the earth. Last week on the first day of the 74th Congress, Representatives, less prolific than oysters, dropped 2,964 bills into the bill box at the right of the Speaker's rostrum, an average of almost seven bills per man. If all of them survived the U. S. would likewise be in sore confusion. But the chances of a bill's surviving are like the chances of an embryo oyster. Legislative name for this survival-of-the-fittest is "Gag Rule."

Last week Democrats had to swallow their own words to change this parliamentary device. The gag rule against which Democratic voices had thundered ever since 1925 was the House regulation that, unless the Rules Committee gave a bill a place upon the calendar, the measure could be brought out for a vote only by petition of a majority (218 members) of the House. In 1931 the Democrats had their day. With a majority in the House for the first time in a dozen years, they changed the rule to allow one-third (145 members) of the House by petition to rescue any bill from a hostile committee.

For two years the new rule served. It was used to bring about the first vote on Prohibition, two votes on prepayment of the Bonus. Last summer Democrats began to rue their rule, under which the Republican minority combining with a few recalcitrant Democrats could seriously discomfit the Administration by exhuming many an unpleasant legislative monster from its committee grave. Many a poor Congressman who had made promises to his constituents felt he had to sign petitions for bills whose passage he did not in the least want.

Last week the New Deal, looking over its unwieldy majority in Congress, decided it was time to go back to the comfortable security of the old gag rule which required a majority to disrupt. Speaker Byrns had the job of getting the change approved by the Democratic caucus. He might have had difficulty had he not offered a concession: the House leadership would allow a vote on the Bonus early in the session. No more persuasion was needed. The caucus plumped 225 to 60 for Gag Rule. Next day it was put to a vote in the House. The Republicans who had so long defended Gag Rule as an honorable mechanism of party government voted 88 to 11 against it. The Democrats, who had long abused it, voted 231 to 69 for it. Once more a House majority went comfortably about its business without fear of a legislative attack from the rear.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.