Committee Government. — An immense amount of
business must necessarily be transacted by a Congress
which legislates for a nation of nearly seventy millions
of people, inhabiting a territory of over three and a
half millions of square miles. The Constitution which
created Congress and conferred upon it its powers of
legislation, makes no provision for the method by which
these powers shall be exercised. Congress has, there-
fore, itself developed a very elaborate set of rules of
procedure, whereby its enormous tasks may be per-
formed.
Lack of time prevents the separate consideration
by the whole Congress of every matter which comes
before it. To provide a means by which each subject
may receive investigation and consideration, the plan
is followed of dividing each House of Congress into a
large number of committees. Each committee busies
itself with a certain class of business; and bills, when
introduced, are referred to this or that committee for
consideration, according to the subjects to which they
relate. Thus, for example, affairs relating to Wash-
ington are handed over to what is known as the Dis-
trict of Columbia Committee, while appropriation bills
are given to the Committee on Appropriations, etc.
CONGRESS IN OPERATION 1 75

These committees consider these bills carefully, and
frequently take the testimony of outside persons in
order to discover the advisability of the measure which
they propose:

The regular course through which a bill has to go
before becoming an act or law is as follows: On
Mondays there is a roll-call of the states, and members
may then introduce in the House or Senate any bill
which they desire. These bills are then referred
by the presiding officer to appropriate committees.
