Book Description

Excerpt from History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States As the work of the Thirty-ninth Congress stands forth complete, it challenges the admiration of mankind. People naturally desire to know something more of the manner in which the rough material was shaped into order, and the workmanship by which the whole was fitly joined together. It can not be said of this fabric of legislation that it went up without the sound of the hammer. The rap of the gavel was often heard enforcing order or terminating the exuberant ow of forensic eloquence. The latter use of the hammer, however, pertained to the House of Representatives, and not to the Senate. The former body many years ago adopted the Hour Rule and the Previous Question for the due limitation of debate, while the latter place no restriction upon their enjoy ment of the luxury of speech, although, with some rare exceptions, they use it with moderation. Discussion is the process by which results in legislation are achieved, hence no history of legislation would be complete without presenting the progress of debate preparatory to the adoption of im portant measures. The explanation of what our legislators did, as detailed in the following pages, is found in the presentation of what they said. Debates, as presented in the following pages, are by necessity much abridged. No attempt has been made to give a summary or synopsis of speeches. That which seemed to be the most striking or characteristic passage in a speech has been given, in the exact words used by the orator. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."