Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-01-30
CAN'TFORGETOLDTIME

| were still absent from the Capitol. refer
| ences are still occasionally made to the
| 'office-seekers who clutter Washington with
| each succeeding change of administration.
| But the writers who employ this phrase are
| probably men who still brush their hair for
! ward of their ears, they did before the
| war. It's not the same old Washington that
| they remember, and. seemingly, can't for
get. The office-seeker, as a type. is as eX-
| tinct in Washington as the dodo is said to
| be everywhere. Not only is Washington
| not 'cluttered with office-seekers at any
| time any more, but the rising generation
| of young people simply do not know what
| the old time type of office-seeker in Wash
ington was like They used to swarm here,
| of course, by the thousands, and go broke
| here while waiting for the office that never
| came, and camp out on the park benches,
| and all that sort of thing, but that Is all
| ancient history. The joke about the chap
| who comes to Washington at change OF
| administration to get billeted to the court.
| of ST. James, and who, after a long period
| of hope deferred and unproductye waiting,
| finally accepts a job Juggling waste-paper
| baskets in one of the departments, is just
| about as live joke, in so far as it refers
| to this town, as the seWing-a-button-ol l-the-
| shirt joke is in these days when all men
| wear collar buttons and don't know what a
| shirt button looks like.
''There are people coming here all the
| time from all sections of the country to
take jobs in the government employ, but
they're not office-seekers of the old-time
type that existed before the civil service
law. They're office-landers. They've got
their billets. They've passed their exami-
nations, got their rating papers, and, most
of them, their appointments. before ever
setting foot in Washington. Once in
while, when a man or woman has passed
a particularly high examination, he or she
comes on to Washington before actually
receiving an appointment. having reason to
hat int NGrlt
be forthcoming in due time. And most of
these people, too. look around for some
thing to do outside while waiting for their
government appointments to materialize.
They don't haunt the corridors of the de-
partments, nor clamor at the doors of Of
ficials, or sit around hotel Hobbies telling
their wrongs, because they know just
where they stand, have no wrongs, and
are altogether just as far apart from the
oldtime typical office-seeker as I am from
a Papuan.
Even when the administrations change
there are no clamorous crowds here look
Ing for the higher appointive and uncassi-
fed positions-professiona place hunters
that is Men engaged in business in the
professions come here, it is true, al the re-
quest of their senator's or representatives
as often as not when administrations
change, to be introduced to the new Presi-
dents and to have their claims considered
for certain positions; but after visit
at the White House these men, unlike the
back to their homes, instead of hanging
around the town giving utterance to their
walls oyer the delay in giving them the
high-pa1d work. A Wasingtonian doesn't
have to be very old to recall the seedy hun
dreds and even thousands of professional
politicians who used to haunt the cheaper
Washington hotels and boarding houses.
looking for government billets, at all times.
whether the administration was in process
of changing not. They'd get away in ar
in their board bills, and after long
months and often years of waiting their
few remaining friends would take them in
hand and chip in to send them back to their
homes. They hung on around Washington
as long as they could, because they hated
to go back to their home towns to acknowl-
edge that their big claims upon the party
hadn't been recognized. but that what
most of them were forced to in the long
run.
And in other striking respects the Wash
ington of today is far different even from
the Washington of a dozen twenty years
ago. For example, there is no longer any
brood of plausible and eloquent people with
claims before Congress in Washington as
there were for a good thirty years or more
after the war. Some of them We're noted
characters usually of a pathetic sort, but
many of them. including the women of the
lot, were grafters and cheerful workers Of
the most pronounced description. Some of
them had actual claims, with, however, lit
tie or no prospect of getting them through
and as little reason why they should be put
through, Out HlOSt Oh tHen Ed0 claims be-
fore Congress that were as purely imagiu-
airy as they possibly could be, for cotton
destroyed by the troops during the war or
an old family manSe destroyed by canonad-
ing, or something of that sort. These peo-
pie with the fake or fanciful claims used to
prey for years at a stretch upon trustfuI
hotel and boarding house keepers Their
claims were always just upon the point
of going through, and when they went
through the holders of the claims were of
course, going to make good all of their bills
with interest added, and to bestow fine
large bonuses upon the credulous ones who
had trusted them for long. Some of
these female claimants used to hypnotic
confiding old boarding house mistresses by
narrating tales of the enormous wealth that
was bound to come to them eventually from
their claims before Congress- and to prom
Use the boarding house women that they
would not only pay them all of the money
they owed them. but contribute generously
toward the education of their daughters
when they grew up, and start their sons in
business. and all that sort of thing. Not
only that, but they d solemnly go through
the motions of assigning interests in their
claims to the people who had trusted them
and thereby gain another long clutch with
tick. There were, of course, plenty of these
claimants whose claims were Just and had
at least show of going through, but these
were in the minority. But the brood of
claimants who used to haunt the CapitoI.
and nod and doze In the galleries and but
tonhole generations of incoming repre-
itol corridors, have gone from Washington
long. long ago.
THE obscure papers published In the re-
mote sections still refer sneeringly too to
the 'hordes of lobbyists at the Capitol in
Washington. Well. it has been so many
years since had a good. square look at a
genuine. Sure-enough Washington lobbyist
that don't believe I'd know one If he was
pointed out to me. The so-called lobbyist
of Washington is almost thing of the
past. and none of the old-time lobbying
methods now prevail Those ancient stories
about representatives in Congress finding
bundles of one-thouSand- dollar bills in their
overcoat pockets upon leaving dinners given
by famous lobbyists are still occasionally
revived. but everybody who knows which |
way Pennsylvania avenue runs knows that |
IL ever those yarns had a shadow of truth |
In them they haven't now. There are in
fiuential men coming to Washington all the |
time. of course. when Congress is in session, |
to represent special interests as the |
phrase runs. but there are few, if any, act
ually resident lobbyists in Washington who |
devote themselves to lobbying as a steady
graft. They wouldn't be endured around |
the Capitol for minute nowadays, where
as. in the old days. they used to mingle on |
free and familiar terms with the national |