ABSTRACT
There is an avenue which leads from the White House in a direct line to the Capitol, the dominating architectural feature of Washington. The room on the right is called the "House", on the left the Senate; both together make up Congress, the law-giving body of the nation. The final Constitution of the United States replaced this one simple system by dividing Congress into Senate and House of Representatives, doing this simply by analogy with the traditions of the state governments. The fifty-eighth Congress contained 250 members who had already sat in the fifty-seventh. Congress thus passes on proposed bills; its function is purely legislative, and involves nothing of an executive nature. The Constitution gives to Congress even a jurisdictional function, in the case that any higher federal officers abuse their office. The separation of the Legislative from the Executive is most conspicuously seen in the fact that no member of the Cabinet has a seat in Congress.
