under this rule, would last through 18 calendar days, and might run far longer, depending on the time at which 16 Senators filed a cloture motion.

Surely nobody will seriously assert that 18 days of debate is too short a time in which to present both sides of any question, when the time is devoted to that actual purpose and not to the purpose of obstruction. The real question is whether there shall be a vote at all. The answer to that lies in the choice between the two-thirds vote and the constitutional majority, as a means of cloture after the debate has become an otherwise interminable filibuster.

On this point let me present some specific evidence. Since 1917, the Senate has voted on 22 cloture motions. Three of these-none later than 1926-received more than 64 affirmative votes, although that number was not then required.

Four of them, including the three above mentioned, were supported by more than two-thirds of the Senators who voted. Of the entire 22, only these 4 stopped the filibuster.

Nine motions out of the twenty-two received a constitutional majority.

Fifteen out of the twenty-two were supported by a majority of those present and voting.

Thus we find that if the rule now asked for in Senate Resolution 17 had been in effect since 1917, 13 out of the 22 motions would still have failed. It is hard to see drastic or dangerous future results in a system that would have produced such mild results in the past.

Eight of these 22 motions dealt with civil-rights bills. Of these 8, only 2 received the votes of more than half the membership. Neither of these was supported by two-thirds of those present and voting.

Observe also the time element in these eight tests of cloture on civil rights. Four of the motions, offered from 1938 to 1944, received less than a majority of the votes of those present.

Two of them, in 1946, received a majority vote, but less than a majority of the entire membership.

The last two, in 1950, received a constitutional majority. Not one of these received a two-thirds vote.

Suppose, now, that the provisions of Senate Resolution 17 had been in the Senate rules during the past two decades. Six cloture motions involving civil rights would have been defeated in the first decade. Two would have carried in the second decade. But all of them would have met defeat under the Knowland-Johnson proposal.

Here is evidence that the passage of a cloture motion by a constitutional majority, in civil-rights matters, does not depend on the mere adoption of a rule making such a vote effective. It depends on the development of public opinion and senatorial opinion.

But there has been no instance yet in which that development has reached a high enough pitch to produce cloture by a two-thirds vote of those present. It may well be that the tide of national sentiment is strong enough today to produce that result. Even if that is true, we still have long-term evidence that the two-thirds requirement is not a method of controlling the filibuster. It is, on the contrary, an enthronement of it in the chair of senatorial authority.

Gentlemen, we live in a world and in an age whose political and economic problems and social tensions impose responsibilities on the

American Government undreamed of a generation ago. We are endeavoring to meet them at the legislative level, and to preserve our own rights and liberties in the process, through a continued reliance on the wisdom and patriotism of an informed majority, both in the electorate and in the Congress.

We cannot cope with our problems if the majority abdicates its power, because the majority cannot at the same time abdicate its responsibilities.

Minority government, without responsibility, is chaos. Minority government, with responsibility, is totalitarianism. The choice before us, unless we are going to abandon our democratic institutions, is effective government through a responsible majority, or the negation of government by an irresponsible minority.

That choice lies before your committee, in helping to decide whether the Senate shall move ahead with a cloture rule made effective by a constitutional majority, or move backward into the familiar and paralyzing frustrations of the 1917 procedure.

Senator TALMADGE. Any questions?

Senator JAVITS. I just want to thank you, Mr. Brant, for what is, in my opinion, at least, as erudite a presentation of this matter as Í have heard anywhere, and I think it certainly will contribute very heavily to my thinking. I am very grateful.

Mr. BRANT. Thank you.

Senator TALMADGE. Thank you for appearing before us, and for your very fine statement.

(Additional information subsequently supplied by Mr. Brant is as follows:)

Senator JACOB K. JAVITS,

Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C.

WASHINGTON, D. C., July 8, 1957.

DEAR SENATOR JAVITS: Since testifying before your subcommittee on June 28, I have found definite proof that the motion for the previous question, in early English practice, was deliberately resorted to as an instrument of cloture. It was not by accident, therefore, that it usually had that result. Of the two instances given below, the first rests on an inference too strong to be challenged, the second on direct assertions of purpose by the persons involved.

On April 18, 1640, 5 days after Parliament ended its 12-year dissolution, this entry was made in the Journal of the House of Commons: "Upon the question, whether it should be put to the question, for Mr. Grimston's assuming the Chair, when Mr. Speaker left it, it was agreed it should be put to the question." Upon the main question, "it was resolved, that he should take it."

It is obvious from the nature of that motion, on the naming of a member to preside in committee of the whole, that the purpose was affirmative. It was also a crucial action. The House intended to challenge the arrest by Charles I of members of the last Parliament, and other violations of privilege. The challengers needed a man of proven courage in the Chair, one who would not say, as the Speaker had done in 1628: "Let not the reward of my service be my ruin * * * I will not say, I will not put the question; but I say, I dare not." So in 1640 they moved and carried the previous question and placed in the Chair Sir Harbottle Grimston, who had just called on his fellows to cure the ulcerous body politic by cleansing it of the causes of its "blotches, blanes, and scabs" (Parliamentary History of England, VIII, 420-421, 435-436).

A fortnight later King Charles offered to abandon the illegal "ship money" system of raising revenue if Parliament would vote certain specified funds for his war against the Scots. The story is told in the Earl of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, which he began to write in 1646. After 2 days' debate, the popular John Hampden "thought the matter ripe for the question, and desired that the question might be put, 'Whether the House would consent to the proposition made by the King as it was contained in the message?" This motion was cleverly worded to unite those who disliked either the form or the size of the request.

When this became evident, opponents of the appropriation called again ""That the question formerly [i. e., previously] proposed by Mr. Hampden should be put', which seemed to meet with a concurrence. Mr. Hyde then stood up, and desired 'that question might not be put.' " There was no satisfaction in it, he said, for those who would support a smaller appropriation. So Hyde proposed "that the question might be put only upon giving the King a supply; which, being carried in the affirmative, another question might be upon the proportion and the manner."

At the suggestion of the Speaker, Mr. Hyde formally "moved that the question might be put.'" There followed, says Clarendon, “a confused clamor and call, 'Mr. Hampden's question,' 'Mr. Hyde's question,' the call appearing much stronger for the last than the former; and it was generally believed that the question had been put and carried in the affirmative *** if Sir H. Vane, the Secretary, had not stood up and said *** that the putting and carrying that question could be of no use." The King, Sir Henry (his recognized spokesman) asserted, would accept nothing that deviated from the amount and manner laid down in his message.

That remark may possibly have sent Charles I to his death, for the House at once adjourned; the adjournment without voting funds caused the King to dissolve Parliament next day, and its successor-the Long Parliament-contained his executioners. The pertinent fact is that the House of Commons had before it two competing motions for the previous question, both of them designed to force an immediate vote on the main question. One was designed to force a vote on the main question and kill it; the other to force a vote on one-half of it and carry it. Not only were these purposes set forth plainly by Lord Clarendon, but he repeated the affirmative intent in lamenting the dissolution of Parliament next day. Sir Henry Vane, he wrote, "had been the only cause that a supply was not voted the day before, by his hindering such a question to be put" (Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, 1888 edition, edited by Macrae, I, pp. 103n, 180-182).

Prior to 1640 the previous question had been moved only twice, resulting in cloture both times. In the next 60 years it was moved more than 700 times, resulting in cloture nearly 500 times. The evidence now presented, of affirmative intent behind the affirmative results, depends, of course on the accuracy with which the Earl of Clarendon recorded the purposes and utterances of Mr. Edward Hyde. Nobody was in a better position to know them, since Lord Clarendon and Mr. Hyde were one and the same person.

Yours sincerely,

IRVING BRANT.

Senator TALMADGE. The next witness is Mr. George S. Montgomery, Jr., of New York City.

STATEMENT OF GEORGE S. MONTGOMERY, JR., FOR AMERICA, NEW YORK, N. Y.

We are happy to have you with us, Mr. Montgomery.

Senator JAVITS. May I say, Mr. Montgomery, we are sorry to have detained you so long. We hope it hasn't inconvenienced you.

Mr. MONTGOMERY. Thank you. I appreciate the privilege of being here. I regard it not only as a privilege but as a duty because I think that the issues involved here cut very deep as to the future of the United States Senate and the American nation.

I am an attorney in the city of New York. I am associated with certain organizations, 2 or 3 of which I think are vitally interested in the subject of your hearings.

One is a closely knit organization called For America. It is a nonpartisan organization for political action. It has perhaps less than 40,000 voluble supporters. I think there are many more throughout the country who are entirely in sympathy with our objectives. The officers of this organization are the national director, former Governor

of Utah, J. Bracken Lee; cochairmen, Dean Clarence Manion, and Dan Smoot of Dallas, Tex.

The executive director is Gen. Bonner Fellers here in Washington. We have a national policy committee of about 100.

There has been no resolution taken by the supporters of the organization. There was a press release made in March at a meeting of the national committee stating the wishes of For America that the Eisenhower civil rights program be defeated.

I am a member of the national policy committee and of the finance committee.

I am also a member of the interim committee for independent political action, which is a continuation or an outgrowth of the committee that backed the campaign of T. Coleman Andrews and Thomas Werdel last fall. In spite of the fact that the campaign got underway at the 23d hour, and the ticket was on merely a handful of States, we believe that the actual count of votes during that panic-stricken time reached nearly a million. I do not pretend to speak either for For America or for the independent political action committee. My views will be my own.

I place on the record my associations for what they are worth. I will make my views very clear as to the acceptance of any of the proposals here for the tightening of the rules of cloture by saying that if I had my way, the Senate would return to the traditions of 111 years, from 1806 to 1917, when the principle of unlimited freedom of debate existed.

With that reactionary point of view you may well understand what I think of the initial impairment of that principle in 1917. I think it was unnecessary. I think it was abortive. I think it was unfortu

nate.

By some miracle in 1949 the defenders of freedom actually won a victory. While the rules of cloture were extended to cover matters other than passing on a measure, the principle of unlimited debate with respect to amendment of rules was preserved and the two-thirds of those present and voting requirement was raised to two-thirds of the constitutional membership.

I have heard a great deal this morning by witnesses who preceded me as to the undemocratic principles under which the United States Senate was operating. I want to say, Mr. Chairman, that I do not, I hope I do not live in the sort of democracy that has been described here this morning.

In the Nation in which I live, that of a limited Republic, the principle of rule by majority has very limited application. There are rights of States and rights of individuals which cannot be impaired by any majority, even 99 percent, and when the Senate of the United States chooses to have absolute freedom of speech and debate, I think that is a tradition to which we should return.

I believe that freedom of debate and speech in the Senate is of far greater importance than those five instances in the Constitution which require a two-thirds vote.

I might introduce a little reverse English here when I say that the restrictions on impeachment have for 25 years become more and more irksome to me individually, reaching an emotional peak in this month of June 1957. However, going back to the strange victory in 1949 of the defenders of freedom, we find that those who would curtail

debate in the Senate soon discovered the mistake that had been made, and so in 1951 you will find the forces at work to correct that defeat. The hearings in October 1951, before your Rules Committee, Mr. Chairman, make very interesting reading. I would say that there has perhaps been no evidence anywhere else, any record in the Senate and House, where the genuflection to pressure groups is more apparent. I could take 6 months, if I were filibustering in the Senate, to discuss the material in the report of the hearings of October 1951. I will only make two comments.

In the first place, and I am putting this on the record, one of the pressure groups that appeared in 1951-and I assume will appear again this year-was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. I want the record to show that the backing of that organization contains among its officers and directors, a majority of individuals with Communist-front affiliations of from 1 to 72. I am not making that as a casual smear because it will fit in later to what I am going to say.

The second part of that record, Mr. Chairman, which I wish to supplement, arose from the testimony of a union official who came before this committee and proposed that this committee study a method whereby the character of the Senate could be changed by a parliamentary trick from a continuing body into a body which wrote its rules by majority vote at the beginning of each session.

Now, this union official has every right to present his views before a committee, but I must say when the temporary chairman of that committee, the then Senator from Connecticut, joined in the pursuit of this solution, the result was not very edifying.

I want further to supplement the record in 1951, and by coincidence the record of this morning, because in both cases this union official stated that he was qualified to talk about what went on in Stalin's mind because he had been in Soviet Russia.

I want the record to show that the union official went to Russia, as evidenced by letters that have come back and are now in public domain, as an avid supporter of Communist principles, and in these letters to his relatives and friends, he expressed himself as hardly able to wait until he could get back to this country to build Communist principles here.

I want the record to show that. The union official was a witness here this morning, Walter Reuther.

Now, the proponents of limitation of debate in 1951 failed of success, and so in 1957 here they are again. I suppose that it will come to something like the 7-year itch. I hope it is no more permanent.

Before you now you have six resolutions. They are all roughly the same caliber that were considered in 1951, with one possible exception, and that is that strange resolution which declares a Senate rule which has been effective since 1806 to be unconstitutional.

Now, Mr. Walter Reuther this morning expressed his belief that that rule is unconstitutional, and you may believe me, sir, that I paid great attention to his words because in this day and age I believe that Walter Reuther is a greater expert in predicting what the Supreme Court is going to do than the most thoroughgoing constitutional lawyer in the country.

The proposals, sir, may be divided into three parts. They all lead to the same thing.