watchful public opinion to keep track of the circuitous methods pursued.  This undoubtedly lies at the root of the growing demand on the part of American communities everywhere for responsible leadership, for putting in authority and keeping in authority those whom they know and whom they can watch and whom they can constantly hold to account.  The business of the country ought to be served by thoughtful and progressive legislation, but it ought to be served openly, candidly, advantageously, with a careful regard to letting everybody be heard and every interest be considered, the interest which is not backed by money as well as the interest which is; and this can be accomplished only by some simplification of our methods which will centre the public trust in small groups of men who will lead, not by reason of legal authority, but by reason of their contact with and amenability to public opinion.

I am striving to indicate my belief that our legislative methods may well be reformed in the direction of giving more open publicity to every act, in the direction of setting up some form of responsible leadership on the floor of our legislative halls so that the people may know who is back of every bill and back of the opposition to it, and so that it may be dealt with in the open chamber rather than in the committee room.  The light must be let in on all processes of law-making.

Legislation, as we nowadays conduct it, is not conducted in the open.  It is not threshed out in open debate upon the floors of our assemblies.  It is, on the contrary, framed, digested, and concluded in committee rooms.  It is in committee rooms that legislation not desired by the interests dies.  It is in committee rooms that legislation desired by the interests is framed and brought forth.  There is not enough debate of it in open house, in most cases, to disclose the real meaning of the proposals made.  Clauses lie quietly unexplained and unchallenged in our statutes which contain the whole gist and purpose of the act; qualifying phrases which escape the public attention, casual definitions which do not attract attention, classifications so technical as not to be generally understood, and which every one most intimately concerned is careful not to explain or expound, contain the whole purpose of the law.  Only after it has been enacted and has come to adjudication in the courts is its scheme as a whole divulged.  The beneficiaries are then safe behind their bulwarks.

Of course, the chief triumphs of committee work, of covert phrase and unexplained classification, are accomplished in the framing of tariffs.  Ever since the passage of the outrageous Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act our people have been discovering the concealed meanings and purposes which lay hidden in it.  They are discovering item by item how deeply and deliberately they were deceived and cheated.  This did not happen by accident; it came about by design, by elaborated, secret design.  Questions put upon the floor in the House and Senate were not frankly or truly answered, and an elaborate piece of legislation was foisted on the country which could not possibly have passed if it had been generally comprehended.