Books by Woodrow Wilson
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CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT. A Study in
American Politics. 16mo, $1.25.
MERE LITERATURE, and Other Essays,
12mo,$1.50.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENT
A STUDY IN AMERICAN POLITICS
BY
WOODROW WILSON
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1885, BY WOODROW WILSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
To
His Father,
THE PATIENT GUIDE OF HIS YOUTH,
THE GRACIOUS COMPANION OF HIS MANHOOD,
HIS BEST INSTRUCTOR AND MOST LENIENT CRITIC,
This Book
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
BY
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE TO FIFTEENTH EDITION.
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I HAVE been led by the publication of a French translation of thislittle volume to read it through very carefully, for the first timesince its first appearance. The re-reading has convinced me that itought not to go to another impression without a word or two by way ofpreface with regard to the changes which our singular system ofCongressional government has undergone since these pages were written.
I must ask those who read them now to remember that they were writtenduring the years 1883 and 1884, and that, inasmuch as they describe aliving system, like all other living things subject to constant subtlemodifications, alike of form and of function, their description of thegovernment of the United States is not as accurate now as I believe itto have been at the time I wrote it.
This is, as might have been expected, more noticeable in matters ofdetail than in matters of substance. There are now, for example, notthree hundred and twenty-five, but three hundred and fifty-seven membersin the House of Representatives; and that number will, no doubt, bestill further increased by the reapportionment which will follow thecensus of the present year. The number of committees in both Senate andHouse is constantly on the increase. It is now usually quite sixty inthe House, and in the Senate more than forty. There has been a stillfurther addition to the number of the "spending" committees in the Houseof Representatives, by the subdivision of the powerful Committee onAppropriations. Though the number of committees in nominal control ofthe finances of the country is still as large as ever, the tendency isnow towards a concentration of all that is vital in the business intothe hands of a few of the more prominent, which are most often mentionedin the text.