The CHAIRMAN. But will not the candidate be able to say this money was not expended in securing his election; it was expended in securing his nomination? That is a step on the way.

Mr. CABLE. The main thing is to get at the political committees and the candidates.

Mr. TYDINGS. I think you could cover it if you would say that these reports that are required to be filed are bottomed on the general election; in other words, consider the primary incident thereto, but all of it a step toward election.

Mr. LOZIER.. But that would furnish only imperfect and inadequate relief. Suppose a man running against you for the nomination spends $50,000. How are you going to correct that abuse by this bill?

Mr. CABLE. The main idea of the bill is publicity.

Mr. LOZIER. But you can not require him to make public something which he is not required to make public under our constitutional law and under the limitations imposed on Congress by the Constitution. You are attempting to require him to do something which, if the Newberry decision means what it says, Congress has no right, no power to require him to do, and he can ignore the provisions of this bill.

Mr. CABLE. The Newberry case said that Congress could not pass a law making it a crime to exceed certain expenditures at primary elections. We do not try to make this a crime. We simply require the candidate to file a report every so often.

Mr. LOZIER But you can not require him to file a report of his expenses in connection with his nomination unless Congress under the organic law, is authorized to require such report.

Mr. CABLE. This is the way around it, in my opinion. It disregards primaries altogether. It is a proposition, the whole year around, this requiring that he shall file a report. Now, if he does not file reports but takes the position that he may be compelled to file them under State law but not under Federal law, he is at a disadvantage.

Mr. PHILLIPS. I come back to the old proposition that with so much red tape, so many reports to file, people will not want to go into politics. It is just like the public utilities to-day. A man is almost a fool to go into that business, because everybody is trying to regulate it, and is pestering the public utilities for all kinds of reports. A man does not want to bother with it.

Mr. LOZIER. I want Mr. Cable and the gentlemen of the committee to understand that I am in full sympathy with this bill, and I would like to see a condition created in our law with reference to nominations and elections of candidates for the House and Senate by which complete and adequate relief from all these abuses could be secured. I am willing, as I said in supporting our chairman's resolution (H. J. Res. 93), to support any legislation which is calculated to correct existing abuses. Furthermore, I think we should not stop there. I think we should go further and by a constitutional amendment give Congress power to regulate these expenditures. That question should be settled definitely. I have introduced a resolution which will give Congress power to limit all expenditures made or incurred by any candidate for the office of Senator or

Representative in the Congress of the United States, and to regulate and limit the expenditures made or incurred by any person or persons, corporations, committees, or any other associations for the purpose of influencing, directly or indirectly, the nomination or election of any Senator or Representative, and to prohibit corrupt practices in connection with any such nominations or elections. It is House Joint Resolution No. 91. Of course, my resolution seeks to obviate the effect of the Newberry decision.

Mr. CABLE. That is the only way you can.

Mr. CLEARY. What do you mean, Mr. Cable, in the last two lines of your bill, where you refer to the fact that a candidate may spend $2,500 but not to exceed $5,000. Does that mean that a man can spend $5,000 if he wants to?

Mr. CABLE. Yes. The candidate himself may, if the voting members bring it up to that amount. The trouble is this. that our corrupt practice laws were passed before women voted. I think a man should have a fair chance at it. The voting population has doubled, and you ought to take that into consideration. You ought also to take into consideration that in some districts the voting population is small, while in others it is large, and therefore you should have some elastic rule to go by.

Mr. PHILLIPS. Supposing you had some provision that a copy of every letter sent out by an organization or signed by an officer of an organization should be furnished?

Mr. CABLE. I think that is a fine idea.

The CHAIRMAN. You mean, Mr. Phillips, a form letter, not any personal communication.

Mr. PHILLIPS. If it is a political communication prohibit them from using association stationery, such as Y. M. C. A. stationery or W. C. T. U. stationery. If they send out a strictly personal letter, let them take personal stationery so that they will not have the appearance of speaking for the organization.

The CHAIRMAN. The House meets at 11 o'clock to-day and it might be that the members of the committee are anxious to attend. However. I wanted to call to the attention of Mr. Cable and the members of this committee the language on page 3, beginning with line 10, reading:

That it shall be unlawful for any candidate for the office of Senator, Representative, or Delegate in the Congress of the United States at any general or special election held in connection with the election of a person to fill such office to give, contribute, expend, use, or promise, or cause to be given, contributed, expended, used, or promised, either personally or by aid or means of a political committee or committees, associations, organizations, and friends, in procuring his or her election, any sum of money

*

Now, I do not believe, Mr. Cable and gentlemen of the committee, that in our cursory examination of this subject the other day we very carefully noted the fact which is evident in a careful reading, that all this responsibility is on the candidate himself. I do not know whether the members of the committee had noted that fact. We took up and discussed in a tentative way the other day the responsibility for the individual use of money, not connected with any committee. This relieves, if I have read it right, any responsibility and does not include any money spent voluntarily by any individual, however much he may have spent. Am I right, Mr. Lozier?

Mr. LozIER. I understand it that way. In other words, your point is that it does not reach organized or unorganized committees, independent agencies, to secure the election of an individual.

Mr. CABLE. It was not intended to limit the expenses of an individual committee.

The CHAIRMAN. That matter was tentatively taken up here, and it is important. It may be the judgment of other members, and I am frank to say it is mine, that it would be very difficult to reach the class of contributors to which our attention was directed the other way in the discussion, and the responsibility for all this is at the door of the candidate himself under this enumeration. I do not know whether we got that as clearly the other day as we have it here. Mr. CABLE. Have you any other suggestions, Mr. Page?

Mr. PAGE. Mr. Lozier's points remind me that it might be well for the committee, when it comes to consider this matter, to examine the Supreme Court decisions in the Indiana, Oklahoma, Cincinnati, and Rhode Island cases, which were brought in the Federal courts upon the motion of the Atorney General and were based upon a remnant of the old election laws which were supposed to have been repealed in 1892, I think; but it was discovered that one section of those laws was permitted to remain extant, whether inadvertently or not I do not know, and was invoked later on under the administration of Attorney General Gregory, where the strong arm of the Government reached out into the States, into those States that I mentioned, under that provision of law and undertook to regulate or to bring a cause, criminal in its nature, against certain parties for a violation of that law, and the lower courts were sustained by the Supreme Court.

Mr. LOZIER. In holding what?

Mr. PAGE. In holding that the Federal Government had jurisdiction under the provision. Justice Lamar, in one case I remember, dissented very strongly on the ground that the provision in effect was repealed and that at any rate it should not have been invoked after the lapse of many years when it was the belief of Congress that these Federal election laws had been repealed.

Mr. CLEARY. What is the amount of money that a Representative may spend?

Mr. PAGE. The limit is $5,000.

Mr. CLEARY. Now?

Mr. PAGE. Well, it would cover both the primary and the election. Mr. CABLE. That is the reason the law is no good. It applies both to the primary and the election. In a criminal case, if one is good and the other is not, they both fall.

Mr. CLEARY. Is it considered criminal if this is exceeded?

Mr. PAGE. There is such a provision in there, but you have got to prove that it is a willful violation, and that is difficult to do. Mr.CLEARY. Has any Representative ever been removed? Mr. CABLE. A bunch of Senators have.

Mr. PAGE. The nearest approach to it in regard to any Member of the House was in the case of Blakeley of Pennsylvania. That was about 1914 or 1916. Mr. Blakeley was returned elected as a Representative from the State of Pennsylvania. His certificate of election was filed. His opponent brought suit, or instituted a cause with the At

torney General of the United States, who instructed the local United States District Attorney to take up the matter, which was done. Mr. Blakeley frankly admitted that he had spent, or that there was spent in his behalf, $30,000, but that he had no knowledge at the time that any law was being violated. He thought it was a perfectly proper thing to do. Well, he pleaded nollo contendere. The matter was compromised by his relinquishing all right and title to the seat, and a new election was called. He did not attempt to take his seat. A new election was called and another man was elected.

Mr. LOZIER. That election was given quite a good deal of publicity in the press at that time.

Mr. PAGE. Now, there was another case with which you are probably familiar, in the last Congress, of Rainey against Shaw of Illinois, the sitting member. The complaint there was that Mr. Shaw had not filed his statements within the time prescribed by law, and. I believe, that he had exceeded the amounts prescribed in the law. That was brought as a contest in the House, the only case of its kind. There was no question as to the election of Mr. Shaw; that was not contended. The Committee on Elections, I believe, was unanimous in its report that there had been no violation of law. Redress in that case, as in the Blakeley case, might have been had in the courts, but Mr. Rainey saw fit to bring it as a test before the House.

Mr. CABLE. There have been a few cases. For example, in 1871 the election of Alexander Caldwell was contested, according to the Senate records, and when they investigated it he tendered his resignation. Then there is William Clark, of Montana, who it was claimed spent $150,000. Contest was made, and he resigned. Isaac Stevenson, of Wisconsin, it is claimed, spent $107,000, but he retained his seat. Then there is William Lorimer, of Illinois. was claimed that he spent more than $100,000 and the contest was reopened in the Senate after he was seated, and the vote was 55 to 28 that Mr. Lorimer was not duly elected. Then the Newberry

case came on.

It

Mr. PAGE. With the exception of the Newberry case, those cases came up long before the Federal law was in effect.

Mr. LOZIER. Those other cases were bottomed upon the general principle that the ethics of good government had been violated and that inasmuch as the Senate had the right to determine the qualifications of its members it could refuse admission to anyone who was guilty of such flagrant practices.

Mr. PAGE. My observation of the operation of the present law is that it has been wholesome only in the matter of furnishing certain publicity. I do not think it has been complete. I believe its operation, to all intents and purposes, has been practically nugatory. I think, in other words, that it is not a workable law. It does not altogether do what its framers thought or hoped it would do. It has done some things. The national committees of the great parties have been punctilious in filing their reports, and complete reports: but the same can not be said about these subordinate organizations. Mr. CABLE. But they do not file reports of their receipts between times, do they?

Mr. PAGE. Oh, no; only within the time prescribed in the law.

Mr. LOZIER. What would you say about its psychological effect on candidates, as a restraining influence?

Mr. PAGE. For some time I think it had that effect. Latterly, I believe there has been a little loosening, some laxity. The filing of these statements has been regarded as more or less perfunctory, and one thing is certain, that they cause a candidate a great deal of trouble. I send to each candidate whose name I have, of all political parties, four statements, four blank forms, before and after a primary and before and after an election. They come back to me in all sorts of conditions. In a great many cases, no receipts or no expenditures are reported at all because the candidate swears that there has been none, and which of course must be taken as accurate.

Now this law, I believe, has no teeth in it. The provision that the candidate must have willfully violated the law, and I suppose you could not do otherwise than put that in, renders it almost impossible successfully to prosecute where the amount exceeds $5,000. In many instances I have had to call the attention of gentlemen to their rights under the law in the way of exemptions, and in some instances reports will come in embracing items which the candidate was not required to report upon, the aggregate of which will bring the amount of expenditures beyond the lawful limit.

Mr. LOZIER. Does that frequently result because of lack of harmony in the exemptions between the Federal law and the State law? I know that in Missouri we have to account in our State report for some expenditures which are not required to be reported by the Federal statute.

Mr. PAGE. I suppose that is so.

Mr. CABLE. Now, under the amended section 9, you have a right to spend, in addition to the 3 cents per vote, traveling expenses, stationery, and postage.

Mr. CLEARY. Must you include newspaper advertising in your expenses?

Mr. PAGE. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Page, would you care to say whether, in your judgment, the Newberry decision had a tendency to encourage that disregard for the law?

Mr. PAGE. No, sir: I do not think so. I do not think that, aside from the members of Congress who were here when the Newberry decision was rendered, it is generally known what interpretation was placed upon that decision by the Attorney General and by the law committee to which I have previously referred. I do not believe it is generally known that the effect of the Newberry decision was perhaps to invalidate the primary features of the law.

Mr. LOZIER. That decision was given much publicity, Mr. Page. I do not believe there has been any question before the Congress of the United States in years that has excited more general interest among the rank and file of the people than the Newberry election.

Mr. PAGE. That is no doubt true, Mr. Lozier, but I base my observation upon the fact that so many gentlemen have come to me to file primary statements and when their attention was called to this decision they expressed ignorance of its effect. They of course know in a general way about the Newberry decision, but they have never given much thought if any to its effect upon candidates for Congress in the primaries.