The President got the idea that while there was no actual recess between the two sessions of Congress, there was a “constructive” recess.
The Mephistopheles who whispered this baleful advice in the ear of Mr. Roosevelt was a better friend to the appointees who were to benefit by it—General Wood and Dr. Crum, for example—than they were to the President. The members of Congress were not slow to reason the case to this effect:
If there has been such a recess as to give General Wood a promotion in the army, and to Dr. Crum a fat office in the revenue service, then it has been a recess for all purposes.
“If the President can fill offices upon a supposed recess, we can fill our pocket with mileage upon the same supposition.
“The whole thing being imaginary, that theory which puts Wood higher up on the pay-roll, and which puts a negro in the Custom House at Charleston, will also imagine that we went home during the supposed recess, and that we have just returned from Georgia, Alabama, Wisconsin, California and the state of Washington. It’s a poor rule that won’t work both ways.”
The law clothes the President with the power to make recess appointments—which rids him of the necessity of consulting the Senate. In this instance, he created a recess in his mind, when none existed in fact, and the result was good for Wood and Crum.
The imaginary recess having been created by the President, the members of the Lower House took an imaginary trip home during the imaginary recess, and then proposed that they be paid their imaginary expenses, not in imaginary money, but in hard cash.
Therefore, sixty-odd Republicans and forty-odd Democrats, and two Union Labor men, voted to give themselves $190,000 of the people’s money to pay for imaginary journeys made during an imaginary recess.
It is doubtful if a more shameless attempt to steal from the public treasury has ever been attempted.