=The Speaker and the Committees.=—The House of Representatives elects its own presiding officer, who is known as the Speaker. He has general charge of the proceedings and until a few years ago appointed all the committees. All questions of procedure are decided by him and he determines which member of the House shall be “recognized”, that is, permitted to speak, when several members desire to have the floor. The Speaker is always a prominent member of the majority party and usually one of its leaders. He has a considerable influence on the work of the House. In a body of more than four hundred members, it stands to reason that a great deal of the business must be done by committees. There are now nearly sixty of these committees, the most important being those on rules, appropriations, ways and means, interstate and foreign commerce, post-offices, military affairs, naval affairs, and agriculture. [Sidenote: The committees: how selected.] Since 1910 these committees have been appointed by a complicated plan which places the selection in the hands of the whole House.[115] The majority party in the House obtains a majority on each important committee. [Sidenote: Stages in the making of a law:] =The Process of Lawmaking.=—The work of the committees may best be explained by describing the various stages through which a bill passes before it becomes a law. [Sidenote: 1. Introduction of bill.] In the first place, any member of the House may introduce a bill (which is a draft of a proposed law) either for himself or for someone else. He does this by writing his name on the back of the bill and dropping it into a large basket at the Speaker’s table. During the course of each session many thousand bills are placed in this “hopper” as it is called. One of the Speaker’s assistants takes each bill from the basket and refers it to the proper committee. If the bill relates to taxation it goes to the Ways and Means Committee; if it relates to railroads it goes to the Committee on Foreign and Interstate Commerce. Every bill goes to some committee before the House looks at it. [Sidenote: 2. Consideration by a committee.]