OCR Text |
Show A STACKED COMMITTEE 149 many of the issues were of national interest. Policies were involved that were not applicable only to sections of the country. The Echo Park Dam question was one of these. Another was lost interest on the federal invest- ment. It still is a popular theory that Congress is influenced the most by pressure from "home folks." As a hypothesis this would have more reliability in the House than in the Senate. House members must run for reelection every two years. A Senator has six years in which to con- template his sins and mend his fences. Nevertheless, the idea that their voices are heeded on Capitol Hill has been accepted as truth by the general public, and public relations strategists do not overlook the fact in the conduct of campaigns either for or against proposed legislation. The benefits or the horrors embodied in a bill are exposed, and organizations, clubs, unions, churches and individual citizens are implored to express their views to their congressional representatives. The actual value of these so-called popular pressure tactics might be seriously questioned, but they are relied upon just as if the therapeutic results were a known factor. The crsp case was no exception. The California opponents, the conservationists, and the Upper Basin proponents all followed a similar course. All sought to bring both national and local popular pressure upon the Congress, and all did it in the same way - by individual letters, by newspaper edi- torials and by resolutions. All these expressions of opin- ions and demands, both for and against the project, wound up in congressional offices, and a large number of them were preserved for posterity in the Congressional Record. |