MINORITY RULE

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 10, 12 January 1924, Page 6

MINORITY RULE

America is not to escape the evils of a three-party system. Republican rebels held up the election of Speaker in the House of Representatives until they received promises that the Standing Orders would be amended to permit them to exercise greater influence. The abolition of the closure, giving them more scope for filibustering, was what they aimed at. Now a Radical group has demonstrated that it holds the balance of power in the Senate. In a supposedly Republican Congress it has forced the election of a Democrat chairman to the Interstate Commerce Committee. This Committee, which deals' with railways and other means of communication, is one of the most important of those which shape American domestic policy. President Coolidge, in his Message to Congress, made it plain' that-he wished domestic business to be placed in the forefront, and the Radicals have now put a big obstacle in hia path by removing this Committee from his control Republican' success in the Presidential election will depend largely upon the record of the present Congress, and how are the Republicans to make that record a worthy one if Democrat chairmen confront them in the Committee rooms and insurgent minorities assert their rights •in the Chambers? But the immediate effect

of the Radical action is not the worst. The Radicals now realise their strength. They are too weak to do anything big by themselves, but by barter they may purchase support for their own minority ideas. There is every danger of tha control of Congress being sold to the highest bidder.