Before leaving Congress he tried once more to obtain consideration of his bill but in vain.

Just as that Congress was expiring, John S.Henderson of North Carolina was at last allowed to move a suspension of the rules in order to take a vote on a bill to reduce internal revenue taxes, but he failed to obtain the two-thirds vote required for suspension of the rules.
That the proceedings of the Forty-ninth Congress were not entirely fruitless, was mainly due to the initiative and address of the Senate.
Some important measures were thus pushed through, among them the act regulating the presidential succession and the act creating the Interstate Commerce Commission.

The first of these provided for the succession of the heads of departments in turn, in case of the removal, death, resignation, or inability of both the President and the Vice-President.
The most marked legislative achievement of the House was an act regulating the manufacture and sale of oleomargarine, to which the Senate assented with some amendment, and which was signed with reluctance by the President, after a special message to the House sharply criticizing some of the provisions of the act.

A bill providing for arbitration of differences between common carriers and their employees was passed by the Senate without a division, but it did not reach the President until the closing days of the session and failed of enactment because he did not sign it before the final adjournment.

Taken as a whole, then, the record of the Congress elected in 1884 showed that while the Democratic party had the Presidency and the House of Representatives, the Republican party, although defeated at the polls, still controlled public policy through the agency of the Senate..