It is one of the ironies of the political history of this period that the Democrat who for many years had been among the most devoted to a reform bill, William R. Morrison of Illinois, should not have been in Congress now that the tide had turned to lead in its making. Mr. Morrison had been defeated in the fall of 1886 and it was necessary to have a new chairman for the Ways and Means Committee. Roger Q. Mills of Texas was chosen. The appointment was a red rag to the high protectionists, for Mr. Mills was an out-and-out free-trader. After Mr. Carlisle he was the ablest and best informed man in Congress on the tariff. There are two classes of Congressmen, those who study their subjects and those who do not. While three-fourths of Mr. Mills’s colleagues visited with constituents, dined with their fellows, looked after their fences, held their ears to the ground, he was poring over tables and reports. He had entered Congress in 1873, an ex-confederate officer thrice wounded during the war but still as handsome a man as there was in the body—one of the few Congressmen who never allowed Ben. Perley Poore to put his biography into the Congressional Directory! Mr. Mills was the soul of chivalry, and more than once exasperated his Democratic colleague by his generosity to his opponents. He had refused in 1883 to join the Democrats in their opposition to the admission of the colored members from South Carolina. They had been elected, they must be admitted. In 1884 McKinley’s seat was contested. Mr. Mills became convinced that McKinley had really been elected and he voted accordingly. Poor “Pig Iron” Kelley, ill and distracted over the attack on his favorite doctrine of protection as well as over the corruption in his own party which had at last become too general and high-colored to escape even his blind eyes, had angered the House and it had moved to reprimand him. Mr. Mills protested: he was old, he had faithfully served his country, he would have no part in so cruel and unjust a measure. Mr. Mills had been brought up in the fine old school of Democracy. Free speech, free trade, independent action, self-reliance were cardinal virtues to him. He took his principles as he found them in Thomas Jefferson, and he literally followed Jefferson’s advice to go back frequently to the ideas on which the government had been founded for encouragement and advice. The interpretation of protection which he had found in force when he entered Congress and the growing combinations of business men to support it, he despised, and from the first all his fighting blood had been up against them. He had been on the Ways and Means Committee continually since his first appointment and had contributed some of the strongest arguments and sayings to be found in the various debates. “Free poker and a taxed Gospel” was his phrase; his way of characterizing the failure to get Bibles on the free list and playing cards off.