a moderate reduction in
rates of duty, which, after considerable amendment in the committee of
ways and means, was reported to the House on the 12th of April; but no
further action was taken until the 17th of June, when Morrison moved
that the House go into committee of the whole to consider the bill.
Thirty-five Democrats voted with the Republicans against the motion,
which was defeated by 157 nays to 140 yeas. No further attempt was
made to take up the bill during that session, and in the ensuing fall
Morrison was defeated as a candidate for reelection. Before leaving
Congress he tried once more to obtain consideration of his bill but in
vain. Just as that Congress was expiring, John S. Henderson of North
Carolina was at last allowed to move a suspension of the rules in order
to take a vote on a bill to reduce internal revenue taxes, but he failed
to obtain the two-thirds vote required for suspension of the rules.

That the proceedings of the Forty-ninth Congress were not entirely
fruitless, was mainly due to the initiative and address of the Senate.
Some important measures were thus pushed through, among them the
act regulating the presidential succession and the act creating the
Interstate Commerce Commission. The first of these provided for the
succession of the heads of departments in turn, in case of the
removal, death, resignation, or inability of both the President and the
Vice-President.

The most marked legislative achievement of the House was an act
regulating the manufacture and sale of oleomargarine, to which
the Senate assented with some amendment, and which was signed with
reluctance by the President, after a special message to the House
sharply criticizing some of the provisions of the act. A bill providing
for arbitration of differences between common carriers and their
employees was passed by the Senate without a division, but it did not
reach the President until the closing days of the session and failed of
enactment because he did not sign it before the final adjournment. Taken
as a whole, then, the record of the Congress elected in 1884 showed
that while the Democratic party had the Presidency and the House of
Representatives, the Republican party, although defeated at the polls,
still controlled public policy through the agency of the Senate.

CHAPTER VI. PRESIDENTIAL KNIGHT-ERRANTRY

Although President Cleveland decisively repelled the Senate's attempted
invasion of the power of removal b