The Indiana State sentinel., 1874-02-17
THAT FRANklNG PRIVILEGE"

HOW THE AVERAGE CONGRESSMAN GETS
ALONG WITHOUT, AND WHAT BE THINKS OF
THE BEGGARLY THING, ANY HOW.
y Washington letter to the Chicago Times
has this inimitable picture:-The artist who
desires to accurately immortalize the dis
contented man will please come to Washing
ton. Let him pitch his easel near the oval
glass window of a vestibule-door in the capt.
tOl, and snatch a sketch of congressman
buying postage stamps. As the page brings
in sheet of the tiny portraits of departed
patriots, and the member hands over the
unwilling currency in exchange therefor,
his face invariably takes on the lines of sui
lenness and intractable discomfort, which
will glorify forever the name of the modern
salvator who can successfully slap them in
to canvass: have never seen a congressman
paying for his postage stamps who did
not look as dlsconsolate as man whose
wife was rapidly recovering from a
dangerous illness. They hate the
law which shuts them out from
the old franking steal and hate themselves
for having passed it. References to the
wonders which were to follow its abroga-
ton are sneeringly lugged into speeches, and
several members of the house and senate
have openly declared that they wish the old
rule restored. The longer a man has been
delegate the harder the rein pulls. The
life, where to purchase postage stamps has
seemed as regular as to buy the family -four,
do not smart when requested to pay for their
gueebacks here. But Hamlin, of Maine,
with his thirty odd years of senatorial life,
undergees the tortures of tooth-drawing
every time he gives his three cents for an
adhesive medallion of pater patri9. The
grand old days, when Subsidy Pomeroy and
his clerks franked $4,000 circulars for the
Merchants Union Express company, are
brooded over until she Congressional spleen
almost cracks, and the bile grows thick as
BoNNY-CLABBER.
+ Some portion OF the existing law is certain to
be modified the present session. Members
are already in trim for mutiny at being forced
to pay for the transmission of public
documents''-which means to stick stamps
on the copies of their speeches, which they
forwardto distant aunts and wives mothers.
Bills VIII be introduced demanding appro-
priations for sowing this weakling seed
broadcast, or asking that the stuff be sent
free of all postage. The main step thus gained,
it is but hop to the remainder of the
nuisance as it was, and diapers may again
travel thousand miles to be washed bear
ing the frank of the paternal NJ. G. Creswell
is body and soul against any revival of the
fraud. He believes the present sweeping law
so good that any material alteration would
damage the national revenue incalculably.
proposed notifications is in the cases of
postage on country weekly newspapers, and
on journals in exchange with other journals.
He said, so late yesterday, that the
weekly newspapers, circulating in coun-
ties in which they are published,
cannot seriously clog the workings of the
mails, and that he would willingly see them
handled free of charge. He is, also, the
staunch friend of the editorial scissors. He
never advised the assessment of postage on
newspaper exchanges, and will gladly see it
clasSed with by-gones. But he asserts, and
sits down and proves all he says by saucy
lot of figures, that the government is max
ing money by the death of the franking
pest; that the direct income from matter
which previously was dead-neaded is enor-
nous, while the saving in service and out
lay for handling superfaous material is still
greater. Hundreds of thousands of dollars
are saved on single railway lines. But the
sentiment of congress is against him. Mem
bers want the privilege, their families storm
tor it, their immediate parasites whine for
it, visiting constituents wheedle for it, chill
dren cry for it, and think they will all get it.