[6] An incident which occurred when he was not speaker may serve to illustrate the manner in which he routed his opponents. Representative Springer, of Illinois, who had a reputation for loquacity and insincerity, once asked for unanimous consent to correct a statement which he had previously made in debate. "No correction needed," shouted Reed. "We didn't think it was so when you made it." [7] In his _Manual of General Parliamentary Law_, Reed declared that the House prior to 1890 was the most unwieldy parliamentary body in the world. Three resolute men, he asserted, could stop all public business. A few years later, when the Democrats were in power, they adopted the plans which Reed had so successfully used. [8] These acts were part of the general financial history of the period and in that connection demand fuller discussion at a later point. Cf. Chap. XV. CHAPTER XI INDUSTRY AND _LAISSEZ FAIRE_ About the time the Sherman Anti-trust law was being passed, in 1890, Henry D. Lloyd was writing his book _Wealth Against Commonwealth_, in which occurred a memorable passage: A small number of men are obtaining the power to forbid any but themselves to supply the people with fire in nearly every form known to modern life and industry, from matches to locomotives and electricity. They control our hard coal and much of the soft, and stoves, furnaces, and steam and hot-water heaters; the governors on steam-boilers and the boilers; gas and gas-fixtures; natural gas and gas-pipes; electric lighting, and all the appurtenances. You cannot free yourself by changing from electricity to gas, or from the gas of the city to the gas of the fields. If you fly from kerosene to candles, you are still under the ban. To understand the dangers of the monopolies which Lloyd feared and denounced, it is necessary to know the principal features in the development of American industry from the close of the Civil War to 1890.