Naturally, all this agitation had stirred Congress. Early in 1880 the Senate had passed a bill providing for a commission, but the House, jealous of its rights in the matter of devising revenue bills, did not agree. Now, however, the Secretary of the Treasury asked for a commission, President Arthur in his first message asked for one, the Industrial League kept up the pressure, and finally in the spring of 1882 the House consented. The idea of Senator Eaton of Connecticut, with whom the bill for the commission originated, was that it should be composed of nine members—six experts, one for each of the six great industries of the country; two statisticians such as “David A. Wells of Connecticut and R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia,” and as chairman “one of the great governing heads of the country, not an expert in anything except in all that makes men great.” Mr. Wharton’s idea, as given at the Tariff Convention, was that “each of the chief groups of industry should be represented by one man.... For president, a man of high standing, preferably one known to his fellow-citizens as having acceptably performed important public service, and of really exalted character and intelligence, should be chosen. For secretary, a man well versed in the working of our existing laws, in Treasury rulings and judicial decisions, and in the ways of custom houses and the tricks or evasions of unscrupulous importers, would be most valuable. “It might be necessary that what is loosely called the Free Trade element should be represented on the commission; both political parties should certainly be. Seeing that the appointments would be made by a Republican President, and that the Republican party is firmly committed to the principle of Protection to home industry, it would obviously be right that a majority of the commission should be Republicans and that a majority also should be distinctly Protectionists, but extremists of every kind are to be avoided.”