Our government is founded on the doctrine that if 100 citizens think one way and 101 think the other, the 101 are right. It is the old doctrine that the majority must govern. Indeed, you have no choice. If the majority does not govern, the minority will; and if the tyranny of the majority is hard, the tyranny of the minority is simply unendurable. The rules, then, ought to be so arranged as to facilitate the action of the majority.

Besides giving the chair the power to count a quorum and to refuse to entertain motions it regarded as dilatory, the rules provided that the Rules Committee should write for each bill a special rule that would determine the conditions under which the bill would be considered. Since Reed was the dominant member of the Rules Committee, this last measure increased his power still further. The Democrats had warned darkly that ‘the Speaker, instead of being as for the past one hundred years the servant of the House, shall be its master.”