of his conduct in connection with certain land matters.  Senator Tillman favored the bill.  The Republican majority in the committee under Senator Aldrich, when they acted adversely on the bill, turned it over to Senator Tillman, thereby making him its sponsor.  The object was to create what it was hoped would be an impossible situation in view of the relations between Senator Tillman and myself.  I regarded the action as simply childish.  It was a curious instance of how able and astute men sometimes commit blunders because of sheer inability to understand intensity of disinterested motive in others.  I did not care a rap about Mr. Tillman’s getting credit for the bill, or having charge of it.  I was delighted to go with him or with any one else just so long as he was traveling in my way—­and no longer.

There was another amusing incident in connection with the passage of the bill.  All the wise friends of the effort to secure Governmental control of corporations know that this Government control must be exercised through administrative and not judicial officers if it is to be effective.  Everything possible should be done to minimize the chance of appealing from the decisions of the administrative officer to the courts.  But it is not possible Constitutionally, and probably would not be desirable anyhow, completely to abolish the appeal.  Unwise zealots wished to make the effort totally to abolish the appeal in connection with the Hepburn Bill.  Representatives of the special interests wished to extend the appeal to include what it ought not to include.  Between stood a number of men whose votes would mean the passage of, or the failure to pass, the bill, and who were not inclined towards either side.  Three or four substantially identical amendments were proposed, and we then suddenly found ourselves face to face with an absurd situation.  The good men who were willing to go with us but had conservative misgivings about the ultra-radicals would not accept a good amendment if one of the latter proposed it; and the radicals would not accept their own amendment if one of the conservatives proposed it.  Each side got so wrought up as to be utterly unable to get matters into proper perspective; each prepared to stand on unimportant trifles; each announced with hysterical emphasis—­the reformers just as hysterically as the reactionaries—­that the decision as regards each unimportant trifle determined the worth or worthlessness of the measure.  Gradually we secured a measurable return to sane appreciation of the essentials.  Finally both sides reluctantly agreed to accept the so-called Allison amendment which did not, as a matter of fact, work any change in the bill at all.  The amendment was drawn by Attorney-General Moody after consultation with the Inter-State Commerce Commission, and was forwarded by me to Senator Dolliver; it was accepted, and the bill became law.