When a Republican member of the House arose to move the usual adjournment for the holidays, there was a storm of hisses and cries of “No, no!”
Said the leader of the House, amid deafening plaudits: “We are the servants of the people. Our work is not yet complete. There must be no play for us while coal barons stand with their feet on the ashes of the poor man’s hearthstone, and weeds and thorns cumber the fields of the farmer for lack of money to buy seed and implements. There must be no play for us while railway magnates press from the pockets of the laboring man six and eight per cent. return on thrice watered stocks, and rapacious landlords, enriched by inheritance, grind the faces of the poor. There must be no play for us while enemies of the human kind are, by means of trust and combination and ‘corners,’ engaged in drawing their unholy millions from the very life-blood of the nation, paralyzing its best efforts and setting the blight of intemperance and indifference upon it, by making life but one long struggle for existence, without a gleam of rest and comfort in old age. No, Mr. Speaker, we must not adjourn, but by our efforts in these halls of legislation let the nation know that we are at work for its emancipation, and by these means let the monopolists and money-changers be brought to a realizing sense that the Reign of the Common People has really been entered upon, and then the bells will ring out a happier, gladder New Year than has ever dawned upon this Republic.”
The opposition fairly quailed before the vigor and earnestness of the “new dispensation.” There were soon before the House and pressed well on toward final passage a number of important measures calculated to awaken an intense feeling of enthusiasm among the working classes. Among these was an Act establishing a Loan Commission for the loaning of certain moneys of the United States to Farmers and Planters without interest; an Act for the establishment of a permanent Department of Public Works, its head to be styled Secretary of Public Works, rank as a cabinet officer, and supervise the expenditure of all public moneys for the construction of public buildings and the improvement of rivers and harbors; an Act making it a felony, punishable with imprisonment for life, for any citizen or combination of citizens to enter into any trust or agreement to stifle, suppress or in any way interfere with full, open and fair competition in trade and manufacture among the States, or to make use of any inter-State railroads, waterways or canals for the transportation of any food products or goods, wares or merchandise which may have been “cornered,” stored or withheld with a view to enhance the value thereof; and, most important of all, a preliminary Act having for its object the appointment of Commissioners for the purchase by the Federal Government of all inter-State railway and telegraph lines, and in the meantime the strict regulation of all fares and charges by a Government Commission, from whose established schedules there shall be no appeal.