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On the other hand, it is just as idle for Congressmen to seek to excuse themselves as a body by uttering jeremiads as to the improper way in which their constituents press them to do things that ought not to be done. The individual Congressman can be excused only by frankly admitting that the fault lies with the Congressmen taken collectively. The remedy is simple and easy of application.

Congress has now, and has long had, the power to rid its members of almost all the improper pressure brought to bear upon the individual by special interests—great and small, local and metropolitan—on such subjects as tariff legislation, river and harbor legislation, and pension legislation. Congress has not exercised this power, chiefly because of what I am bound to regard as a very shortsighted and unwise belief that it is beneath its dignity to delegate any of its functions. By passing a rule which would forbid the reception or passage of any pension bill save the pension legislation recommended by the Commissioner of Pensions (this of course to be rejected or amended as Congress saw fit, but not so amended as to include any special or private legislation), Congress would at once do away with the possibility of its members being subject to local pressure for improper private pension bills, and at the same time guarantee proper treatment for the veteran who really does deserve to have everything done for him that the country can afford. The veteran of this stamp has no stancher friend than the Commissioner of Pensions; whereas he is often the very man passed over when special bills are introduced, because the less deserving men are at least as apt as the others to have political influence.