Just why the House passed the bill is an unanswered question. Some people have suggested that Congressmen were fed up with White House pressure tactics. According to this theory, Congressmen chose home rule as the issue on which to buck the Administration because they knew it was an issue their constituents couldn't care lose about.
Other people maintain that there simply never was enough support to pass a home rule bill in the House. Certainly it must have been apparent to those who voted for the Sisk version that the wide divergence between it and the Senate bill would preclude final passage of any bill at all during that session of Congress.
It is easy enough to understand why Southern Democrats and their conservative friends across the aisle oppose home rule for Washington. Over the years they have used various arguments. But in the end it comes to the fact that Negroes are in the majority in Washington and post-home rule politics would inevitably reflect this fact.
It is harder to understand the rest of the House. No one in Washington seems able to explain why the House as a whole is so much more hostile to the District of Columbia than the Senate. Why, for instance was the Senate willing to accept the automatic Federal payment, while even those House members who favored home rule balked at the payment provision?
Passage of the Sisk Bill left the D.C. home rule movement temporarily wondering what to do. Nearly everyone considered it a victory for anti-home rule forces. But at the same time everyone was anxious to save what was left of the situation. If the Sisk Bill was the best they could get out of the 89th Congress, there was no reason to hope for better things from succeeding Congresses, which would most likely be more conservative.
Eventually a group of local home rule advocates, including the Washington Home Rule Committee and the League of Women Voters, issued a statement advising home rule proponents to accept a modified Sisk plan as the only reasonable hope for home rule. Most people expected the Senate to withdraw its own bill and pass something similar to the Sisk Bill in order to expedite final passage of home rule in some form.
Confusion
As it turned out, the Senate did nothing of the kind. Instead it stood by its own bill and called for a conference with the House. Local home rule advocates are now split. The Democratic Central Committee has refused to go along with the Home Rule Committee and the League of Women Voters. It insists that the Sisk Bill is a fraud, that it was not offered in good faith, and that anyway the home rule movement should not be in such unseemly haste to back down. Besides, they argue, the Senate and the Administration have not yet backed down and it would be pointless for local home rule forces to be the first ones to do so.
If the latest home rule tiff has not produced much activity in Congress, it has stimulated local activity. For years the home rule movement has been sedate, attracting very little attention to itself.
But now things are different. Last November, the Metropolitan Washington Board of Trade, the only important local opponent of home rule, circulated around the country a letter implying that Washingtonians do not want home rule. In response to that action, a whole new group of rule agitators--the Free D.C. Movement--has grown up. The activities of the Free D.C. Movement have been far from sedate: in a few months it has created more publicity for home rule than past home rule activity has created over a period of many years.
Opposition
The Board of Trade, an organization of some 7,000 business and professional people in the Washington area, has traditionally opposed home rule. The reasons for this opposition are not hard to find.
Under the present system, with no responsible officials and no clear ilnes of authority within the District government, there exists a power vacuum. The Board of Trade (or, more precisely, the board of directors of the Board of Trade) moved into this vacuum happily.
David Clark of the D.C. Coalition of Conscience (a part of the Free D.C. Movement) maintains that the Board of Trade has a pork barrel arrangement with members of Congress. Examination of campaign receipts of Southern Congressmen, he believes, would show substantial contributions from members of the Board of Trade. In addition, business hostility to the increased real estate and other taxes which local self-government might entail is no secret.
The objective of the Free D.C. Movement was to demonstrate local residents' desire for home rule, and to find and isolate that part of the Washington business community which opposes home rule. To do this, it chose the tactics of boycott.
From the beginning, Free D.C.'s tactics were controversial. It threatened to boycott businesses which did not sign home rule petitions, send pro-home rule telegrams to the President and Congress, display Free D.C. stickers, and contribute to a pro-home rule fund. The demand for contributions was subsequently dropped.
Controversial Tactics
Opinions differ as to the effect of the Free D.C. tactics. It is undeniable that the Free D.C. Movement has aroused enthusiasm for the home rule struggle among groups of people who could never have felt a part of the sophisticated intellectual activities of the Home Rule Committee. The Free D.C. campaign has also showing that the Board of Trade, so far from expressing the opinion of all Washtonians, does not even speak for all of its own members.
Free D.C. has been criticized for using economic reprisals against those who differ with it politically. To this it must be replied that the Board of Trade has itself made effective and unabashed use of economic warfare first, in the relationship it maintained with the House District Committee