On the other hand, it is just as idle for Congressmen to seek to excuse themselves as a body by uttering jeremiads as to the improper way in which their constituents press them to do things that ought not to be done. The individual Congressman can be excused only by frankly admitting that the fault lies with the Congressmen taken collectively. The remedy is simple and easy of application.
Congress has now, and has long had, the power to rid its members of almost all the improper pressure brought to bear upon the individual by special interests—great and small, local and metropolitan—on such subjects as tariff legislation, river and harbor legislation, and pension legislation. Congress has not exercised this power, chiefly because of what I am bound to regard as a very shortsighted and unwise belief that it is beneath its dignity to delegate any of its functions. By passing a rule which would forbid the reception or passage of any pension bill save the pension legislation recommended by the Commissioner of Pensions (this of course to be rejected or amended as Congress saw fit, but not so amended as to include any special or private legislation), Congress would at once do away with the possibility of its members being subject to local pressure for improper private pension bills, and at the same time guarantee proper treatment for the veteran who really does deserve to have everything done for him that the country can afford. The veteran of this stamp has no stancher friend than the Commissioner of Pensions; whereas he is often the very man passed over when special bills are introduced, because the less deserving men are at least as apt as the others to have political influence.
In the case of the tariff and the river and harbor legislation, what is needed in each case is ample provision for a commission of the highest possible grade, composed of men who thoroughly know the subject, and who possess every attribute required for the performance of the great and difficult task of framing in outline the legislation that the country, as distinguished from special interests, really needs. These men, from the very nature of the case, will be wholly free from the local pressure of special interests so keenly felt by every man who is dependent upon the vote of a particular district every two years for his continuance in public life. Such a river and harbor commission could report, and probably would report, a great and comprehensive National scheme for river and harbor improvements fit to be considered by the people as a whole upon its merits, and not dependent for enactment into law upon a system of log-rolling designed to placate special interests which are powerful in each of many score Congressional districts. Such a tariff commission could get at the facts of labor cost here and abroad by expert inquiry, and not by the acceptance of interested testimony; such a commission could consider dispassionately the probable effect upon the entire social and economic body of all changes in any given branch of the tariff, and its recommendations would represent the exercise of careful judgment from a disinterested standpoint. Such a commission could work in harmony with the Commissioner of Labor, so as to insure that the laborers for whom the tariff is passed get the full benefit of it; for the major part of the benefit of a protective tariff should unquestionably go to the wage-workers.