Nor are all the requests for legislation merely. One constituent desired to have this particular Congressman put his name on the free mailing list for all public documents. That this would be impossible, because it would mean delivering to the applicant several tons of documents every month, does not in the slightest detract from the interest of the fact elicited by an investigation that the applicant was the manufacturer of an article made from waste paper, and the public documents would afford a useful source of raw material. Is there a remedy for such a state of things? The answer is, yes; and, moreover, it is a remedy which Congress can itself immediately provide. There is no complete remedy, of course. No scheme can be devised which can prevent such a request as that of the constituent last named who wished public documents to use in his private paper business. Requests like this merely mean that in every district individuals will always be found who will request improper favors. As regards these people, all that can be done is to create a vigorous public opinion—an opinion which shall not only make it uncomfortable for any man to demand such favors, but which shall cordially support the Congressman in refusing them and hold him accountable for granting them. We must trust to individual integrity to resist such individual and sporadic attempts to corrupt it. The case is entirely different when we come to the other favors mentioned. These favors are those which the Congressman describes as being improperly, habitually, and insistently demanded by large portions of a given constituency, with at least the acquiescence of the constituency as a whole. It is futile to expect to cure this type of evil merely by solemnly saying that each Congressman ought to be good. It is futile to ask the average Congressman to cut his own throat by disregarding the requests of his own constituents for special and improper favors in the matter of tariff legislation, river and harbor legislation, and pension legislation; even though these same constituents adopt the beautifully illogical position of expressing a great—and, curiously enough, often a sincere—indignation that their Congressman, as the only means of securing for them what they insist he shall secure, joins with other Congressmen in granting for all other constituencies the same improper favors which are eagerly demanded by his own individual constituency. Moreover, under the present system, the small man, when he asks for something in which his own district is keenly interested, is told by the big man who represents the big interest that he can’t have his little favor granted unless he agrees to stand by those who wish to grant the big favor—and the small man may be remorselessly “held up” in this fashion, even though the small favor he asks is proper, and the big favor he is required to grant entirely improper. When such is the pressure upon the average Representative,