The Appropriation committees, both in the House and Senate, almost invariably show a friendly disposition toward the law. They are composed of men of prominence, who have a sense of the responsibilities of their positions and an earnest desire to do well for the country and to make an honorable record for their party in matters of legislation. They are usually above resorting to the arts of low cunning or of sheer demagogy to which the foes of the reform system are inevitably driven, and in consequence they can be relied upon to give, if not what is needed, at least enough to prevent any retrogression. It is in the open House and in Committee of the Whole that the fight is waged. The most dangerous fight occurs in Committee of the Whole, for there the members do not vote by aye and no, and in consequence a mean politician who wishes ill to the law, but is afraid of his constituents, votes against it in committee, but does not dare to do so when the ayes and noes are called in the House. One result of this has been that more than once the whole appropriation has been stricken out in Committee of the Whole, and then voted back again by substantial majorities by the same men sitting in open House. In the debate on the appropriation the whole question of the workings of the law is usually discussed, and those members who are opposed to it attack not only the law itself, but the Commission which administers it. The occasion is, therefore, invariably seized as an opportunity for a pitched battle between the friends and foes of the system, the former trying to secure such an increase of appropriation as will permit the Commission to extend its work, and the latter striving to abolish the law outright by refusing all appropriations. In the 51st and 52d Congresses, Mr. Lodge, of Massachusetts, led the fight for the reform in the Lower House. He was supported by such party leaders as Messrs. Reed, of Maine, and McKinley, of Ohio, among the Republicans, and Messrs. Wilson, of West Virginia, and Sayers, of Texas, among the Democrats. Among the other champions of the law on the floor of the House were Messrs. Hopkins and Butterworth, Mr. Greenhalge, of Massachusetts, Mr. Henderson, of Iowa, Messrs. Payne, Tracey, and Coombs, of New York. I wish I had the space to chronicle the names of all, and to give a complete list of those who voted for the law. Among the chief opponents of it were Messrs. Spinola, of New York, Enloe, of Tennessee, Stockdale, of Mississippi, Grosvenor, of Ohio, and Bowers, of California. The task of the defenders of the law was, in one way easy, for they had no arguments to meet, the speeches of their adversaries being invariably divisible into mere declamation and direct misstatement of facts. In the Senate, Senators Hoar, of Massachusetts, Allison, of Iowa, Hawley, of Connecticut, Wolcott, of Colorado, Perkins, of California, Cockrell, of Missouri, and Butler, of South Carolina, always supported the Commission against unjust attack.