Bill hopper (furniture)

A bill hopper is a piece of furniture used for the receiving of bills in the United States House of Representatives. It was formerly used in the United States Senate.^[1]

Congressional representatives place

The term hopper is derived from funnel shaped storage bins that contained grain, coal, or animal feed. The movement of the grain as it poured into the storage bin has been likened to 'hopping' or dancing. The United States House of Representatives wrote that the "hopper represents the initial phase of a bill's journey toward refinement, or final passage, much like grain when processed into flour".^[3]

The hoppers are fed from the top and emptied from the bottom.^[2] The term became particularly prevalent within the agrarian society of the 19th and early 20th century United States. Many legislators came from agricultural backgrounds, and analogies were frequently drawn in speeches between the refinement of grain and the progression of bills.^[3] The Indiana representative John Hanna, said that "Let us have an end of tumbling every legislative grist into the appropriation hopper to be ground out by the use of burrs and ill-adapted and ill-adjusted to the purposes of general legislation". Francis G. Newlands of Nevada said in a 1900 speech concerning the Isthmian Canal Commission that "A certain amount of brute force is required in order to put this bill into the legislative hopper. When it comes out of the hopper in nine months hence, for it will take that time, we then hope it will be a perfected product".^[3]

The

• First reading, the initial stage of a bill in various legislatures
• Act of Parliament - First reading, the initial stage of a bill in the Westminster system