Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/241

WOODROW WILSON 201 States," which was instantly accepted by the Inter national Review and published in August, 1879. His criticism was that in Congress the important legislation was shaped in committee; and secrecy, he contended, is the atmosphere in which all cor ruption and evil flourish. To remedy the evil of committee government, which he attributed to lack of leaders, he devised a plan whereby Cabinet mem bers should be entitled to a seat in Congress, and the right to participate in the debates, even if it were deemed advisable not to give them the right to vote. All through his later voluminous writings, Wilson clung to this theory and put the idea into practice, so far as he could, with marked effect, when he came to be the head of the nation, by per sonally appearing before joint meetings of both houses of Congress and reading his messages. One effect of Wilson s selection of a career so early in his college course was to induce him to select all his studies with a view to it, and to reject as unsuited both to his tastes and his needs the rigid and inflexible curriculum then prescribed at Prince ton. As illustrating how he reached for anything which would help him in his career, he went outside the campus to learn stenography so that he might the more easily make notes during his library work. This acquirement has proved an invaluable aid to him throughout his life, and all his public papers were originally prepared in the characters of the