The Dockery-Cockrell Commission, 1893,1895

• Author: Oscar Kraines
• Published date: 01 September 1954
• Date: 01 September 1954
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591295400700306
• Subject Matter: Articles

THE DOCKERY-COCKRELL COMMISSION, 1893,1895
OSCAR KRAINES
New York University
INTRODUCTION
HEN, ON
MARCH
3, 1895, the Joint Commission to Inquire into
the Status of the Laws Organizing the Executive Departments -
r’ or, as it was generally called, the Dockery-Cockrell Commission -
submitted its reports, &dquo;little or no attention was paid to them.&dquo;
1
This
could have been because there were so many dramatic national problems
to excite the public mind during Cleveland’s second administration -
more than at any other time since the Civil War. To mention just a few:
Americans had the financial panic and its attendant mass violence;2
and agrarian unrest, and controversy over the tariff, the coinage, the income
tax and the trusts; and there was tension with England over Venezuela,
and with Spain over Cuba.
And yet the work of the Dockery-Cockrell Commission was urgently
necessary and of far-reaching, permanent importance. With the nation
rapidly expanding across the continent, American business reaching un-
precedented magnitude and complexity, and the United States becom,
ing a world power, the Federal Government had more work to do, of
which the regulatory and social welfare services were increasingly a part.
The Fifty-first Congress, which adjourned on March 4, 1891, had been
the first billion dollar Congress. The number of Government employees
had tripled since the days of President Madison. The increasing ex-
penditures of the Government in the face of stationary revenues and a
depleted treasury were shaking the public credit.3
Antiquated business methods unnecessarily increased the cost of
operating the Government. While private business had been modernizing
its organization and its administration of finance, and perfecting efficient
procedures with the help of mechanical innovations, the Government re-
mained behind the times in both organization and methods. &dquo;As the
annual payments of the Government grew into the hundreds of millions
1
"Governmental Waste," The Nation, LX (March 28, 1895), 232. The New York Times, March 12,
1895, p. 16, covered these reports fully but made no editorial comment. William A. Dunning,
in "a Record of Events," Political Science Quarterly, X (June, 1895), 364, devoted only twelve lines
to the Commission.
2
Davis Rich Dewey, National Problems, 1885-1897 (New York: Harper &
Bros., 1907), 238-51; Donald
Marquand Dozer, "Benjamin Harrison and the Presidential Campaign of 1892," The American
Historical Review, LIV (October, 1948), 49-77; John Sherman, Recollections of Forty Years in the
House, Senate and Cabinet: An Autobiography (Chicago: The Werner Co., 1895), 1141-1208.
3
"The Treasury Condition Confronting the New Administration," The Commercial and Financial
Chronicle, LVI (March 4, 1893), 353-54; Alexander Dana Noyes, Thirty Years of American Finance:
A Short Financial History of the Government and People of the United States Since the Civil
War, 1865-1896 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902), 182-206; and Albert C. Stevens, "Phenom-
enal Aspects of the Financial Crisis," The Forum, XVI (September, 1893), 22-32.
417

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418
of dollars, and bureaus and officials multiplied, the settlement of accounts
by the old methods became complicated, and exasperating delays were
frequent.&dquo; 4
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE JOINT COMMISSION
On
March 3, 1893, six years to the day since the Senate had authorized
the Cockrell Committee for the purpose of investigating the federal system
of administration, Congress provided for a joint commission to investigate
the same area with a view to thorough, practical results. This action came
about after almost three months of parliamentary struggle. First intro-
duced by Rep. Dockery (Dem., Mo.) on December 12, 1892, a resolution
to create this commission passed the House on February 9. Nine days
later, the Committee on Appropriations reported the bill to the Senate
with amendments, and on February 23, unanimous consent was granted
to read only the amendments. One of the amendments passed was to
strike out the provision creating the joint commission. As the result of a
conference, however, Dockery’s resolution was retained, but the provisions
for the membership of the joint commission were changed. When the
conference report was presented to the House on March 2, the Legislative,
Executive, and Judicial Appropriations Bill for the fiscal year ending June
30, 1894, in which the Dockery resolution was to be incorporated, passed
by a vote of 107 to 77. The next day, Sen. Henry L. Dawes (Rep., Mass.),
acting for the Committee on Appropriations, submitted the conference
report to the Senate, which concurred in it by a vote of 41 to 21. After
the Speaker and the Vice-President signed the bill, it was rushed to the
White House, where President Benjamin Harrison approved and signed it.
As passed by Congress, Rep. Dockery’s resolution provided:
That a joint commission, consisting of three Senators, members of the Fifty-third
Congress, to be appointed by the present President of the Senate, and three member-
elect of the House of Representatives of the Fifty-third Congress, to be appointed by the
Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Fifty-second Congress, shall, during the
Fifty-third Congress, inquire into and examine the status of the laws organizing the
Executive Departments, bureaus, divisions, and other Government establishments at
the National Capital; the rules, regulations, and methods for the conduct of the same;
the time and attention devoted to the operations thereof by the persons employed
therein, and the degree of efficiency of all such employees; whether any modification
of these laws can be made to secure greater efficiency and economy; and whether a
reduction in the number or compensation of the persons authorized to be employed
in said Executive Departments or bureaus can be made without injury to the public
service:
Provided, That the commission herein authorized shall have no jurisdiction to
inquire into and report on pension legislation. Said commission is authorized to employ
not exceeding three experts, who shall render such assistance as the commission may
require in the prosecution of the investigation herein required, and shall receive such
4 Davis Rich Dewey, Financial History of the United States (11th ed.; New York: Longmans, Green &
Co., 1931), 554. See also Herbert D. Brown, "The Historical Development of National Expenditures,"
Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, IX (July, 1921), 6-16; Henry Jones Ford, The
Cost of Our National Government: A Study in Political Pathology (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1910), 1-10.

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419
compensation as the commission shall determine to be just and reasonable. The heads
of the respective Executive Departments shall detail, from time to time, such officers
and employees as may be requested by said commission in their investigations. Said
commission or any subcommittee thereof shall have power to send for persons and
papers, and to administer oaths by the chairman of the commission or subcommittee,
and the commission may report, by bill or otherwise, to their respective Houses of the
Fifty-third Congress. All necessary expenses of said commission shall be paid out of
any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, upon vouchers approved jointly
by the chairman of said commission.’
At evening sessions on the same day, the last day of the Fifty,second
Congress, the president pro tempore of the Senate appointed Senators
Francis M. Cockrell (Dem., Mo.), Shelby M. Cullom (Rep., Ill.), and
James K. Jones (Dem., Ark.), all three of whom had been members of the
Cockrell Committee, to the Joint Commissions and the Speaker of the
House selected Representatives Dockery, Nelson Dingley, Jr. (Rep., Me.),
and James D. Richardson (Dem., Tenn.) to constitute the House’s member,
ship on the Commission.7
7
All were lawyers, with the exception of Rep.
Dockery, who was a physician and banker. Sen. Cockrell was designated
chairman of the Senate branch of the Commission, and Rep. Dockery,
chairman of the House branch. When the Commission would sit as a
whole, Dockery would serve as the chairman. The clerks of the House
and Senate Committees on Appropriations were appointed to be the clerks
of the Commission.
5
24 C R 2482-83 (1893): Act of March 3, 1893, 27 Stat. L. 675, 681. In a brief dispatch entitled "A
Departmental Investigation," the New York Times, March 6, 1893, p. 1, reported the passage of the
resolution as a matter of fact, without editorial comment.
6
Francis M. Cockrell (1834-1915), son of a pioneer Missouri sheriff, was reared on a farm. During the
Civil War, he rose from private to general in the Confederate Army within one year. He served
thirty years in the Senate, and, by virtue of his scholarship in law, government, and economics,
and his keen mind, mastery of detail, and integrity, was considered one of the most valuable men
in Congress. His conduct of the Senate investigation of administration in 1887-1889 won him
great
esteem in all branches of the Government. When the Interstate Commerce Commission was
threatened in 1905 by public charges of corruption, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Cockrell
as its Commissioner in order to save it.
A lifelong Democrat, Cockrell was a believer in free
trade, tariff for revenue only, free silver, and the limitation of civil service to routine clerical
and administrative positions.
Shelby M. Cullom (1829-1914), born on a Kentucky farm and reared in Illinois, became...