1. With the exception of pooling, agrarians lost on virtually all counts, from their preference for stringent—so-called ironclad—prohibitions on railroad behavior, to their preference for state courts, often democratically elected, as the institutional mechanism for enforcing the new law.

2. Votes connected with the 1886 Reagan bill suggest the inadequacy of this approach. The motion to recommit the Reagan bill, for instance, instructed the Commerce Committee report back a version of the Senate bill that would give to the ICC the power to arbitrate railroad labor disputes. Why was this provision included by the Republicans? Precisely be-cause they were trying to move votes; precisely because they were trying to recommit the Reagan bill.

In a similar vein. Professor Sanders suggests that Republicans sought the Hiscock vote as a vehicle to register a “yea” vote on railroad regulation, this in order to mollify district interests who now fiercely demanded some form of regulation. But, in fact, on the final vote of passage almost twice as many Republicans voted in favor of the Reagan bill as voted against it (66 to 35), thus satisfying this particular symbolic need. That the Republicans needed two such votes seems to me implausible, and, at any rate, is left unexplained by Professor Sanders. In point of fact, it is probably more reasonable to treat final votes of passage as symbolic votes; that is, as symbolic shows of loyalty to district interests registered after the relative strength of a bill has been determined by earlier votes.

3. Hinds, Asher C., Hinds' Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1907), vol. 5, p. 399Google Scholar.