Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/251

251 The motion was agreed to; there being on a division—ayes 32, noes 20.

The pro tempore: The resolution is before the Senate and the senator from Georgia [Mr. Hill] has the floor.

Mr. of Georgia: Mr. President, I do not intend to say one word on the subject of woman suffrage. I shall not get into that discussion which was alluded to by the senator from Massachusetts. The senator will remember, if he refreshes his recollection, that when my late colleague, now no longer a senator, made a motion for the appointment of a select committee in relation to the inter-oceanic canal, I opposed it distinctly, though it came from my colleague, upon the ground that the appointment of select committees ought to stop, that it was wrong; and I oppose this resolution for the same reason. I voted against a resolution to raise a select committee offered by a senator on this side of the chamber at the present session, and I have voted against all resolutions of that character.

No senator, in my judgment, will rise in his place in the Senate and say that it is necessary to appoint a special committee to consider the matters referred to in the resolution. It is true I am a member of the committee, and perhaps ought not to refer to it, but we have a standing committee, of which the distinguished senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Hoar] is chairman, the Committee on Privileges and Elections, that, I take occasion to say, is a very proper committee for this matter to go to; and that committee has almost nothing on earth to do. There is but one single subject-matter now before it, and I believe there will be scarcely another question before that committee at this session. There is not a contested election; there is not a dispute about anybody's seat; and yet it is a Committee on Privileges and Elections. What is the reason for going on continually and appointing these select committees, when there are standing committees here, properly organized to consider the very question specified by the resolution, with nothing to do?

Now, I am going to say one other thing, I do not pretend that the purpose I am now about to state is the purpose of the senator from Massachusetts. I have no reflections to make as to what this resolution is intended for, but we do know that there is an idea abroad that select committees are generally appointed for the purpose of giving somebody a chairmanship, that somebody may have a clerk. That is not the case here, I dare say. I do not mean to intimate that it is the case here, but it ought to be put a stop to; it is all wrong. I think, though, that there ought to be a resolution passed by this body giving every senator who has not a committee a clerk. Everybody knows that every chairman of a committee has a clerk in the clerk of that committee. The other senators, at least in my opinion, ought each to have a clerk. I would vote for such a resolution. I believe it would be right, and I believe the country would approve it. Every senator knows that he has more business to attend to here than he can possibly perform. Why, sir, if I were to attend to all the business in the departments and otherwise that my constituents ask me to perform, I could not discharge half my duties in this chamber; and every senator, I dare say, has the same experience. It is to the public