Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1906-12-22
LOBBY FABLE LASTS
BELIEF DEEPLY ROOTED IN THE
COUNTRY.
That Moneyed interests Retain Rep
resentatives at the Capito. to
Corrupt Statesmen is
Fixed Idea.

Lobby has arrived N washington us
members are familiarizing themselves
with the looks of the capitol, the
Washington monument, the Smithson-
ian Institution and the Botanical Car
dens.
The Peoples Lobby is based in part
upon "a belief that IS firmly fixed and
widespread among a 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 a 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
mediately following the ciyal war,
there were few well-known high 1iv-
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 a 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 dofngs 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 street lamp to have a look
at them.
They were five $4,000 bills. The
poor but stubborn representative was
not Of course, required to entertain
any idea as to how those five 1000
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 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
rehashed 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 ludicrously
exploited, very often in novels that
pretend to portray official and legisla
tive Washington. The woman lobby
list is generally a strapping, queenly
person, with inky masses of hair and
flashing black eyes-the conventions
stage adventures of the ten-twent.
thirt' 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 thai
they do her legislative bidding or be
cr-r-ushed, and who sweeps with The
odora stride through the corridors o.
the capitol, whitening her enslavec
lawmaking victims with her balefu
glares and at the same time dfffusins
a captivating aroma of orris.
Right along. every year, session
after session. men come to Washing
ton to attend to matters before con