The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-05-18

clear that his words come regularly Blail
talks for hours and at the same even
| rate of speed. Allison speaks in the same
suave manner that he acts, and Zeb Vance.
OF North Carolina, though he usually talks
at the rate of two words to the second, often
| rises to three and frequently to four words.
With all of these speakers Dennis F. Muir
ply is at home and the fastest of them do
not phase him.
Dennis F. Murphy does not weigh more
| than l25 pounds. He is a pleasant-faced,
brown whiskered, slightly built man of
sixty years of age. He was born in Cork.
but he has lost all his Irish brogue since
he came here and he is an American in the
fullest sense. He revises all the manu-
script before 1t goes to the printers and
he works regularly in the Senate. He has
brother that is as good reporter as he
is and who is one Of the few men who can
read his notes. His assistants are all
hgh-prlced men and all have been con
nected with the Senate for years. The
most OF them use the grapohone and the
typewriter and one of the busiest places
in the Capital is the big room off the east
platform of the Senate where this trans
cribing is done.
There is probably no city in the United
States which has so many stenographers in
proportion to its population as Wash
1ngton. There is scarcely a man
in public life who has not a
stenographic secretary who accompanies
him on all occasions and this custom has
grown up within the past twenty years.
Senators Seward and Sumner were among
the first to bring short hand to their aid in
their work and since that time the prac-
tise has grown like Jonah's gourd. Now
every Senator has shorthand clerk wlo
is paid by the government and nearly
every member of the House has
to employ one to keep up with
his correspondence Wilson, of Wash
lngton state, one of the new congressman,
told me yesterday that he had received
1909 letters within the past three mon tbs
and Senator Henderson receives on an
average hundred letters a day. During
the week after his great speech about a
month ago Senator ingalls, received 200
letters by actual count and there is not a
western senator who is not kept busy for
two hours every day in answering letters
The eastern congressman have less cores
pondence, but it is impossible to attend to
public business and do all his own letter
writing. The clerks of the com
mittees of Congress get Sc a day. and thew
are expected to attend to the correspond
ence of the chairmen of the committees as
well. Senator Stanford is said to give his
private secretary his whole salary, but not
few Senators employ their wives, their
sisters, their cousins or their aunts as pri-
Vate secretaries and have their real work
done by the cheap shorthand men with
which the capital abounds.
President Harrison's stenographer gets
81, 500 year, and his private secretary, Mr..
Halford, gets s., 800 The shorthand man
of the bureau of engraving and printing
receives $1,000 annually, and the latest of
the House committeeships are worth s.. 200
year. All of the heads of departments
have stenographers. Every bureau officer
has his shorthand man, and there is
scarcely room among the thousands in
the great government departments which
has not one or more stenographers CON
nected with it.
The stenographic work of Washington
outside the government departments is
very great. There are several thousand
stenograpners and type writers who do
business for lawyers, claims agents and
others. Many of these men and women
have their own offices and their assistants.
and the court reporters here receive from
20 to 80 cents folio They make great
deal Of money in big cases, and there have
been trials here which have paid the re-
porters $4,000 apiece. Many of the most
expert type writers of the United States
are here, and there is a little black-eved
fellow who now acts as secretary
for Mr. Robert Parke, the general pas
senger agent for the Pennsylvania railroad
company here, who can take down seventy
words minute on his Caligraph. and
have myself dictated to him at the rate Of