He is known for originating the Holman Rule, allowing amendments to appropriations bills to cut a specific program or federal employee salary.

As congressman, Holman was most known for his opposition to government spending, especially in subsidies and aid to private enterprises, notably the transcontinental railroad lines.

[1] That made him the ideal choice to chair the Committee on Public Lands in the 1880s and his work at forcing railroad companies to disgorge probably restored millions of acres for actual settlers to take up.

"When Mr. Holman takes his walks abroad and sees Government clerks promenading the avenue in coachmen's coats and toothpick canes he 'objects,'" a Republican newspaper jeered.

The following winter, he tried to bring the Democratic House caucus into line behind a resolution repudiating the grab and was so abused that, according to general reports, he went off on a several-day binge.

One story his friends loved to tell about him was how nefarious interests, realizing that their only chance lay while the congressman was absent from the floor, waited until he was being shaved in the Capitol's barber-shop before offering their bill.

When they reached Fort Yates, in Dakota Territory, he balked at paying five dollars for the steamer ride to Bismarck, pointing out that the post had army ambulances and mules.

And so they did, much to the annoyance of his fellow-traveller, Congressman Joseph Cannon of Illinois, who tipped the wagon-driver to run over every single stone in the road as a punishment.

"[6] In 1876, the Holman Rule was adopted which "empowers any member of Congress to propose amending an appropriations bill to single out a government employee or cut a specific program".

With the vote of a majority of the House and the Senate, the pay of an individual federal government employee could be reduced or a specific program eliminated.

The rule originally targeted patronage jobs, particularly customs collectors, but the federal workforce shifted over time to a civil service insulated from politics.

Taking his chewing tobacco from a leather pouch, sitting tipped back in his chair and toying with a jackknife, the Indiana congressman looked more and more like a throwback to Jacksonian days, as the Gilded Age wore on.

Standing in his place in the House his most energetic outbursts are suspended at the very climax by the necessity of disemboguing the red stream from his distended jaws.

Taking pleasure in teaching first-termers the practical ways of getting things done, he gave advice freely, and, other Democrats agreed, his judgments were almost always sound.

His knowledge of the rules and routines of legislation surpassed that of anyone else, and he kept a close eye on the business of the day – "something that not one man in fifty in Congress can say," a reporter wrote—always aware of what would be coming up next.