had doubtful support when the debate was begun but later gained a substantial majority.

Thus, almost every minority group in the country has benefited because of this principle in conducting the Senate's business. And I believe the country as a whole has also benefited.

The record of the longest continuous debate is held by the senior Senator from Oregon when he was supporting the liberal view on the tidelands bills. His views did not prevail, but he was not subjected to any arbitrary gag rule during the 22 hours and 23 minutes of his speech.

From this brief résumé of the principle and the rule as it now stands, we can see that free debate has best served those who would now destroy it, even though none can tell who may be the next to invoke its protection.

They would destroy this rule and the principle it sustains because this manner of procedure has become beclouded by the civil rights issue-a legislative matter.

And, gentlemen of the committee, that is 99 percent of the cause of the pressure and the agitation to destroy this mudsill, this bedrock of the Senate.

Rule XXII, as a procedural rule, is more important than the passage of any single bill. It is more important than passage of the pending civil rights bills by those who favor them.

It would be hard to think of a more effective method of cutting down the States rights and powers than by putting the straitjacket of a gag rule on their Senators.

Now, I don't call myself an experienced Senator, but the members of this committee who are here this morning at this meeting, even though highly experienced in all phases of government affairs, haven't been in the Senate very long, and I tell you right now, gentlemen, you can't push a Member of the Senate around under the present rules of the Senate. It is not like being Governor of a State, but you can't push Senators around.

If we destroy these, the bedrock of these rules of the Senate, we will soon find that we ourselves are just another single member of a legislative body, and that our States, as such, are not going to get any consideration-not any-as States.

Each State should have a voice in national affairs. Through its Senators the voice of the State is heard, and when the senatorial voices are forcibly silenced, that State is silenced. The people of that State have lost their representation, their opportunity to be heard, their right to have their views considered by the Nation, their privilege of gaining the general support of public opinion.

The clamor for civil rights legislation is confusing the procedures of the Senate, and the nature of the States' representation on the Senate floor.

We will regret the day when we let any issue confuse the procedures on the Senate floor, and the nature of the State's representation there. The substance of these bills and the nature of the Senate as an institution of government are unrelated, but the hysteria surrounding these evil bills is causing a fatal lack of perspective in the minds of too many people.

Fundamental civil rights will be lost if these measures are enacted. The very basic concepts of our Government and system of law will be trampled if the catastrophe of passage should fall on us.

And let me point out, so far as the civil-rights bill is concerned, even at this session one house has already passed the bill, and the other house, by an affirmative vote, has placed it on its calendar, where now it has a chance to be passed, which is proof of the point that it is not necessary even for those bills

Senator TALMADGE. Senator, will you yield at this point?
Senator STENNIS. Yes; I will be glad to.

Senator TALMADGE. As you stated a moment ago, both my colleague from New York and I are new members of the Senate. Getting down then to the fundamental question of passing a bill by discharging a committee, what is required to accomplish that?

Senator STENNIS. Just a simple majority of the vote.

Senator TALMADGE. It could easily have been accomplished by means of a discharge petition, could it not?

Senator STENNIS. Oh, yes, sir; with votes to spare.

Senator JAVITS. Would the Senator yield at this point? Would a motion to discharge a committee have been debatable until stopped by cloture under rule XXII?

Senator STENNIS. As I understand the rules, it would have; yes. It would have been a motion like a motion to take up a bill and would have been subject to debate. It would have to run that gantlet.

Senator TALMADGE. Any legislation is subject to that.

Senator STENNIS. Oh, yes. I inquired during that debate just what the rule was about discharging a committee, and really I found it to be very liberal, very liberal; and I think that course is better. It shows more respect for the committee system, but the other course was adopted by the Senate, and that is history now.

We start from there, but both illustrate how the Senate can act against the strongest kind of opposition.

But, equally bad is the smearing and defamation of the noble and fine principles sustained by rule XXII-the friend of all minoritieswhich has served us so well.

Now, that concludes my written remarks, gentlemen of the committee, but I want to assure you, as a fellow Member of the Senate, and one who carries the same responsibilities that you carry, that I am thinking of this, the welfare-I am thinking of it in regards to problems in our area of the country, of course, but I am thinking of it, too, in terms of the problem of the Nation as a whole, the country at large, and I am thinking of it particularly in view of what is the Senate, after all?

The Senate is an institution. A man who has been honored by his State to be Governor, a man who has been honored to be the attorney general, who have already felt keenly the responsibilities of those offices.

And I know you feel as much as I do the keen responsibilities we bear here as representatives of our States in this national legislative body that is doing so much to set the policies, not for our own country, but for the world.

Now, I don't know who would be the first victim of the change of this rule, but I am certain that there will be many victims. I am

certain, in my mind, that labor will be within a few years the victim. of the change of this rule.

I am certain that business as a whole will see the day when it will be the victim of the rule. There will be areas of the countrymy area will be a victim of the rule. There will be other areas.

When we tear down the last bulwark of strength of the States as such, as States, in the most powerful legislative body in the world, we are really wiping out the State lines, and that is particularly true of the so-called smaller States, and with all deference to anyone who comes here vested with certain power to represent any State or particularly a smaller State, I don't see how he can reach the conclusion that it is his duty to surrender part of that power.

I know, as for myself, without any criticism of anyone else, I feel that when I was given the certificate of election, or the commission, as a Senator from my State, that State entrusted to me certain powers that belong to it under the law, and, so far as I am concerned, I am not going to surrender, consciously surrender, any of those

powers.

I want to give that commission back to the State with the fullfledged power and prerogatives it had when given to me. I want to return my State's powers intact.

Now, may I read just very briefly here from William S. White's book-I ran across these paragraphs last night, and think they ought to be in the record.

I am reading from page 65 of William S. White's book, The Citadel.

Senator JAVITS. I do find myself in agreement with one point the Senator makes, and that is that I feel that those who are opposed to rule XXII are very much on trial in connection with this bill that is on the calendar.

If it is filibustered, I believe there is an excellent chance that rule XXII will be amended.

On the other hand, if wisdom triumphs over other views, and that bill is allowed to go its legislative course, I wouldn't know.

Thank you.

Senator STENNIS. Thank you, Senator.

Quoting now, if I may, briefly :

It is for the present perhaps enough to say only that not in all the great storms that have beset this Republic, not in the First World War, not in the depression, not in the Second World War, not in the transient ascendancies of any and every White House, has the Senate as a whole ever really given ground upon the issue of its rules.

Look at them as good, or look at them as bad; the outstanding fact is that they remain, deeply unpopular though at times they may be, when previously they were to some extent once abridged and breached, the body of the institution was like a man with one leg.

When the southerners returned from the War Between the States, the full operation of the old way was restored, and 36 years before the rules had made the Senate a shelter to Woodrow Wilson's "little group of willful men," he himself had written in 1881 of these same rules, "the Senate's opportunities for opening unrestricted discussion, and its simple comparably unencumbered forms of procedure unquestionably enable it to fulfill with very considerable success its high functions of revision."

Gentlemen of the committee, I am glad to rest my cause in your considerate and deliberate hands.

Senator JAVITS. Senator Stennis, no one can fail to admire their authority and eloquence. I have heard them on the floor, and certainly his is a very typical example of sincerity and his conviction.

Senator STENNIS. Thank you, sir.

Senator JAVITS. I would like to ask the Senator-and I know the Senator will forgive me, if any question sounds too probing, because we are both men trying to get at some truth-I would like-I will not detain the Senator

Senator STENNIS. That is all right. Whatever time you want. If necessary, I will come back.

Senator JAVITS. No, no. It won't be necessary at all.

The Senator is opposed, of course, to this civil-rights bill on the calendar?

Senator STENNIS. That is correct; yes.

Senator JAVITS. And the Senator has very deep convictions about it, as being very unwise in terms of legislation. Am I correct?

Senator STENNIS. Well, yes. The purposes to be accomplished are being accomplished. So much more certainly and more quickly otherwise than by legislation.

Senator JAVITs. Now, the Senator spoke of gag rule. I served in the House of Representatives, and what we defined as a gag rule there was a rule which prevented amendment to a bill. Debate is always limited in the House. We did not consider a gag rule to be a rule which limited debate.

It always is limited.

Now, does that change the Senator's use of that term at all?

Senator STENNIS. Well, the word "gag" there is a slang expression. At greater length the thought could have been expressed differently. I know you have very valuable debate, very valuable debates in the House, and I appreciate very greatly the House.

But, at the same time, its opportunity to really deliberately consider legislation there, it virtually has no opportunity to arouse the membership or the people one way or the other, as I see it.

Senator JAVITS. Now, the Senator, of course, knows

Senator STENNIS. Pardon me. Of course, the big distinction is that the Senators are to represent their States, and not the districts. Senator JAVITS. I will come to that. I will try to be very brief. The Senator, of course, is aware of the fact that the measures before us, the most liberal of the measures before us-Senate Resolution 17— would give about 3 weeks of debate or more before cloture could be applied by a constitutional majority, not a simple majority.

Senator STENNIS. That is right.

Senator JAVITS. I am sure the Senator understands that.

Now, the Senator made one statement which I would like to ask him about. He said that bills filibustered have generally died because they have been unsound, anyway.

I call to the Senator's attention that we have in the record a study by the Library of Congress, to which I would invite the Senator's attention (see appendix, p. 291), which shows there were 35 bills filibustered since 1865, and that among all of these bills, practically all of them have passed in one form or another. The only five bills, according to the study, upon which nothing has happened, which have really been killed, are the civil rights bills, FEPC in 1946 and 1950,

antipoll tax in 1942, 1944, 1946 and 1948, and the so-called antilynching bills in 1922, 1935 and 1937.

Other than that, the only bills which have failed to pass were the so-called force bills in 1890, and the so-called armed ships bill, which the Senator has himself referred to, in 1917.

But, as against those two instances, you have many instances of civil rights bills which have failed because of the filibuster and never been passed; and I would say that I think that bears out the statement that it is the civil rights bills where the mortality has occurred, because of the filibuster, rather than other bills.

The Senator said, however, something else, and I just invite the Senator's attention to that study.

Senator STENNIS. Yes. Well, I am familiar with that study as it existed a few years ago. I haven't looked at it since it was perhaps brought up to date.

But my point is, under this rule in the Senate, these movements or measures or reforms, or whatever you call them, their defeat under the rules of the Senate has not hurt any one, and under the rules of the Senate, they finally found their way into the policy of the law under the hardships, if you want to put it that way, or the rules of the Senate, if they had a continuing merit.

On the other hand, if any measures haven't been able to, it is the strongest possible evidence in my mind that they didn't have the sustaining merit to accomplish the ends in that way.

Senator JAVITS. Senator, I have just two other questions. I don't want to detain the Senator. We will have lots of time to debate that. The Senator said-the Senator will correct me if my quoting is inaccurate that minorities have rights which no majority should be permitted to override. Now, does the Senator feel that the right to be immune from civil rights legislation is one of those rights enjoyed by the people of his State; in other words, a right which no majority should be permitted to override?

Senator STENNIS. Well, I was referring there to certain individual rights. There are certain rights that cannot be taken away from an individual because they are so indelibly written into the Constitution.

On the broad question of civil rights, it is largely a question of methods, Senator Javits. We disagree at opposite ends of the poles on methods, but the general achievement and accomplishment over the years, I expect we are pretty much together after all.

Federal legislation will hurt and hinder there, rather than help. Senator JAVITS. But the Senator does not contend that the Congress would not have a right to pass Federal legislation on the civil rights issue.

Senator STENNIS. Well, if passed within the constitutional framework and under the rules, of course, many of those bills are the proper subject of legislation, yes. I have never contended to the contrary.

I think really the FEPC bill-that is one I made a study of when I first came here was wholly unconstitutional. I did think the socalled antipoll tax was, because it is so clear in my mind, at least, that legislation, statutory legislation, cannot reach that problem.

But, of course, constitutional amendments as submitted would be entirely in order.

Senator JAVITS. Well, is there any one of these civil rights bills the Senator would say the Congress could constitutionally pass?