You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

I love this cartoon because you see in the front and center, it's in the bowling alley,

but you're looking at it from the point of view of the ball

coming at you. And it's knocking over these pins. Each pin at its head has one of a number

of Democratic congressmen serving in Congress in the 1890s. And when you look down the alley, you can see at the end, a very large man with his hand having obviously just cast this big bowling ball at his opponents.

Scattering them with very little resistance.

This is what happened, January 29th, 1890.

It's a new speaker, Thomas B. Reed, from Maine.

And the House considers a contested election in West Virginia.

The Republicans want the Republican candidate to be seated.

The Democrats want to block this.

And they have a weapon that they can use. In the House, members, if they wanted to deny the other side of quorum, they would simply not be present, even though they were sitting right there

in the House chamber. Charles Crisp from Georgia, Democratic leader, he's

going to be speaker later, moves to consider the action on this West Virginia congressman.

They're ready to deny a quorum and block it. The vote's taken. All of the Democrats sit

silently in their seats. When their names are called, they say nothing.

Republicans respond, but it's not enough for a quorum.

Reed, then makes his move.

The chair directs the clerk to record the following names of the members present and refusing to vote.

Reed begins to call the names of Democrats who are not voting.

Crisp gets up, goes down to the House floor directly in front of the speaker and shout,

I appeal from the decision of the chair.

...