A few weeks of quiet but energetic sampling of senatorial opinions brought us to the point of choosing as the desired sponsor one of the only two physicians of the Senate, a man who had heartily indorsed the bill from the beginning and whose cultured dignity would insure right handling for the measure. But it took him nearly three months to reach the conclusion that he was too occupied with other important issues to do this measure justice. Even then he did not refuse, but merely said he could not yet see his way and urged that someone else be asked. This refusal to refuse has been characteristic of nearly all the fifteen Senators who have been invited in succession to sponsor the bill. All of them believed in it, but in their various ways, they have “passed the buck”—some convincingly, some transparently, some gracefully, some awkwardly, but all of them insistent that it was a job better suited to someone else. Several were “too busy”—among these was one who was not a member of any major committee, who had introduced no public-interest bills, and who, as observed from the Senate gallery, sits for hours on end in undisturbed quiet. One assured us he was “too old,” another was sure he was “too ignorant of the subject—it needs a man who can give all the data in debate, as I can’t.” We promised him a perfect arsenal of material all classified and condensed, but he felt sure he wasn’t “equal to doing it well.” Another said he was interested, but better not be the sponsor as—“well, candidly, I shall be up for re-election next year, and you see, ...” And still another who is considered one of the pillars of the major party in Congress, a physically big man, standing something like six feet three, announced to the relatively small woman who invited him to render this bit of public service,—“Really, I’d be afraid to introduce that sort of bill.” On being told that he “hardly looked the part,” he spent an energetic five minutes trying to blot out the picture of himself as a coward. One man assured us that he was not “important enough in the Senate. I don’t count,” he said. When the task was put up to one of the _leading_ men, his answer was, “What you need for sponsor of a bill of this sort is a man who isn’t active, someone who has nothing to lose, someone whose bill wouldn’t be specially noticed.” Other similar advice was to “get a lame duck to do it” in the short session, that is some man who “is going out of politics anyway.” This advice is a reminder of what Senator Thomas of Colorado said, in a speech after his defeat, “the only independent Senators are those just defeated or those just elected.”