As Speaker of the House, Hon. Thomas B. Reed, of Maine, put through certain parliamentary innovations necessary to enact the party's will. He declined to entertain dilatory motions. More important, he ordered the clerk to register as "present and not voting," those whom he saw endeavoring by stubborn silence to break a quorum. A majority being the constitutional quorum, theretofore, unless a majority answered to their names upon roll-call, no majority appeared of record, although the sergeant-at-arms was empowered to compel the presence of every member. As the traditional safeguard of minorities and as a compressed airbrake on majority action, silence became more powerful than words. Under the Reed theory, since adopted, that the House may, through its Speaker, determine in its own way the presence of a quorum, the Speaker's or the clerk's eye was substituted for the voice of any member in demonstrating such member's presence. Many, not all Democrats, opposed the Reed policy as arbitrary. Mr. Evarts is said to have remarked, "Reed, you seem to think a deliberative body like a woman; if it deliberates, it is lost." On the "yeas and nays" or at any roll-call some would dodge out of sight, others break for the doors only to find them closed. A Texas member kicked down a door to make good his escape. Yet, having calculated the scope of his authority, Mr. Reed coolly continued to count and declare quorums whenever such were present. The Democratic majority of 1893 transferred this newly discovered prerogative of the Speaker, where possible, to tellers. Now and then they employed it as artillery to fire at Mr. Reed himself, but he each time received the shot with smiles. The cause for which the counting of quorums was invoked made it doubly odious to Democratic members. To restore the suffrage to southern negroes the Republicans proposed federal supervision of federal elections. This suggestion of a "Force Bill" rekindled sectional bitterness. One State refused to be represented at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, a United States marshal was murdered in Florida, a Grand Army Post was mobbed at Whitesville, Ky. Parts of the South proposed a boycott on northern goods. Many at the North favored white domination in the South rather than a return of the carpet-bag regime, regarding the situation a just retribution for Republicans' highhanded procedure in enfranchising black ignorance. Sober Republicans foresaw that a force law would not break up the solid South, but perpetuate it. The House, however, passed the bill. In the Senate it was killed only by "filibuster" tactics, free silver Republican members joining members from the South to prevent the adoption of cloture.