St. Tammany farmer., 1906-12-29
LOBBY FABLE LASTS
BELIEF DEEPLY ROOTED IN THE
COUNTRY.
That Moneyed interests Retain Rep
resentatives at the Capitol to
Corrupt Statesmen 10
Fixed Idea.

retentattveS AT Ine VaPsIos 70
Corrupt Statesmen 10
Fixed Idea.
The advance guard of the Peoples
Lobby has arrived in Washington. Its
members are familiarizing themselves
with the looks of the capitol, the
Washington monument, the Smithson.
ian Institution and the Botanical Gar
dens.
The Peoples Lobby is based in part
upon a belief that is firmly fixed and
widespread among certain class OF
people throughout the United States,
namely, that Washington Is Uttered
and clustered with lobbyists for big
interests" while congress is in session.
This belief is a curious instance OF
how tenacious of old stories certain
element Of the American population is.
Belief in the perennial existence of
a big Washington lobby is sort OF
tradition. A great many years ago,
and especially during the period i'm
mediate1y following the cival war,
there were few well-known high liv-
ers in Washington who had the name,
whether rightly or not, of being pretty
strong at the capitol.
These men were all in their graves
long before the beginning Of the ninth
decade of the nineteenth century. They
all died in obscurity and as rule in
poverty. Whatever pull they had ever
enjoyed and used had been taken away
from them.
Around these few men clustered the
vast bunch of bribery stories that have
been handed down through the years.
Most Of these yarns are simply incred-
ible. The late John Chamberlain, than
whom no man of his day knew more
of the inside doings in Washington,
used to lie back in his big chair and
laugh until his sides ached when these
narratives were repeated to him.
For example, there is the old, old
story of the poor but stubborn repre-
sentative in congress whose vote was
badly needed in certain Pacific rail-
road legislation. He took dinner with
the so-called Pacific lobbyist one even
ing. The lobbyist helped him on. with
his overcoat when he took his depart
ure.
Out in the street the poor but stub
born representative dug his hand into
his right hand overcoat pocket to get
his gloves. Instead of his gloves he
found some things In that pocket that
cracked most pleasantly. He took
the pleasantly cracking things out of
the. pocket and carried them to the
light of a street lamp to have look
at them.
They were Sfive $4,000 bills. The
poor but stubborn representative was
not, of course, required to entertain
any idea as to how those five $4,000
bills got into his right hand overcoat
pocket. He voted for the measure In
which the lobbyist was interested, Of
course.
This yarn has been resurrected and
reburnished year in and year out ever
since the reconstruction period. The
reasonableness of the story is indicat-
ed by the kind of currency the lobby
list is said to use in his business
$4,000 bills.
Almost all of the. money in the over
coat pocket yarns make the bills of
the $4,000 variety. A poor repre-
sentative in congress, struggling along
on his salary in so expensive city as
Washington, would of course be fixed
out by a smart lobbyist with $4,000
bills as being the kind of money that
would attract the least attention when
he began to spend it.
Yarns in which lobbyists are pic
tured as purposely losing vast sums
of money at poker to senators and rep
resentatives whose votes they wanted
all date back to ante-bellum antiquity,
but once in a while this old legend is
re11ashed even in modern times.
There are scores and hundreds Of
lobbyist stories, most of them in a
sort of hereditary circulation in the
west and south, that are wholly and
absurdly unbelievable by any sane
man familiar with legislative condi-
tions in Washington at this or any
previous period. Many of the yarns
are the more or less exaggerated stor-
les of lobbyist happenings in connec-
ton with corrupt state legislatures
adapted to non-existent conditions In
Washington.
The mythical woman lobbyist Of
Washington, too, has been 1udicrous1y
exploited, very often in novels that
pretend to portray official and legisla-
tive Washington. The woman lobby.
list is generally strapping, queenly
person, with inky masses of hair and
flashing black eyes-the conventional
stage adventures of the ten-twent'-
tllirt' theatrical circuit-who holds the
destinies of dozens of madly infatu-
ated senators and representatives in
the palm of her lily hand, who visits
them in their home libraries In the
middle Of the night to demand that
they do her legislative bidding or be
cr-r-ushed, and who sweeps with The
odora stride through the corridors of
the capitol, withering her enslaved
victims with her baleful
One Subject Barred.