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The bill was introduced into the House and Senate almost simultaneously. It passed the Senate with little difficulty, but in the House a peculiar set of obstacles was encountered.

The Committee on Executive Department Expenditures was quite inactive. Few bills were referred to it. The chairman was not in good health and the committee seldom met. Sometimes the committee meetings were as infrequent as two or three times a year. Such committees meet only upon call of the chair. It happened that the committee had had before it a bill which the chairman did not like. It was sponsored by certain women's clubs, and required the Army to put its superannuated horses and mules out to pasture for life, instead of killing them as had been common practice. The chairman felt that this was sentimental, and would have none of it. Now a bill at that time had to pass both the House and the Senate in the same session. If it passed the Senate and was not acted upon by the House during a single session, it died and had to be reintroduced in both houses at the next session.

Minor bills of this kind seldom meet with much opposition. What its friends mostly have to contend with is inertia due to lack of interest on the part of those operating the cumbersome machine known as the United States Congress. This bill which meant so much to workshops for the blind and which would bring to them millions of dollars in business, lay neglected in the files of the committee. The chairman would not say why he would not call a meeting, but everyone knew that it was the superannuated horse bill which was the fly in the ointment. If the committee met, the pressure from women's clubs would make it necessary for the committee to act on that bill. So long as it did not meet there was little that the kind-hearted ladies could do about it. While the chairman did not like the old horse bill, he did not care to incur the ire of some of his feminine constituents by having the bill reported unfavorably. Finally, however, sufficient pressure was mustered to get both bills reported out with a recommendation for passage.

Time was running out, however. Hundreds of bills were on the House calender -sic- awaiting action. It takes considerable time to get a bill acted upon by the House. Sometimes it can be disposed of in two minutes, sometimes it requires two days of discussion. In order to expedite action, the House has set up a unanimous consent calendar. Bills placed upon this calendar come up for action twice a month. However, if any bill on this calendar comes up for action and one vote is cast against it, it must go over until the next unanimous consent day. If, the second time it comes up, two votes are cast against it, it is killed.

The Wagner-O'Day bill was placed on the unanimous consent calendar and came up for action within two or three weeks of the end of the session. Congressman Hamilton Fish, who usually favored bills benefiting the blind, for some reason did not like this bill -- probably because it was sponsored by two New Deal Democrats from his own state. Therefore, when it came up he shouted from the back of the room something about the New Deal not being satisfied with regimenting everybody else "and now it's trying to regiment the blind." Illogical as the argument was, it constituted a vote against the bill.

There was still a chance to bring it up at the next unanimous consent day. There was to be one more during the session. The author tried to discuss the matter with Mr. Fish but he was too busy. Mrs. O'Day was ill and unable to push the bill herself. Finally the calendar committee met and, owing to the pressure of bills, decided that no bill could come up on the last consent calendar of the session if it had ever been rejected on a former day. This seemed to sink the measure.

The author, who was responsible for presenting to the members of Congress the arguments for the bill went to Speaker Bankhead and asked for his intervention. Bankhead, knowing that Helen Keller who was born in his native state of Alabama was very anxious to see the bill passed, said that he would help out and suggested a procedure seldom resorted to in Congress. He proposed that the congressman who had been delegated by Mrs. O'Day because of her illness to look after her bills, move on the last day of the session that the rules be suspended and that this bill be taken up. It would require a two-thirds vote to suspend the rule, and when voted upon the bill must pass unanimously.

This congressman, being rather new in Congress, knew very little about the bill, knew less about this special procedure, and was very obviously nervous about the whole matter. The author, who had set his heart on getting the bill passed, was still more nervous. He went to the then Democratic floor leader, Sam Rayburn, and asked his counsel. Rayburn assured him that there was no reason to worry if the Speaker had promised to get the bill through.

The author had found from bitter experience that congressmen under pressure of business too often forget their promises at the last minute, and if Bankhead should forget, there was nothing that could be done about it but to start the whole long-drawn-out procedure over again next session.