The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1908-09-08
VARIOUS METHODS
TO RETAIN SEATS
Politicians Resort to Every
Kind of Pretext to Be
In Congress.
SOME TRY SENSATIONS.
OLD FAvoRITE GARDEN SEED
GRAFT MAKES MANY RURAL
RESIDENTS FEEL FRIENDLY TO-
WARD CANDIDATE.

Washington, Sept. 5.-Wnnder often
is expressed at the exacting labor men
will undergo for the sake of retaining
their means in congress. This does
not apply to the discharge of public
duties. OF the nearly 500 senator's
and representatives there are hardly
more than two score who are even
approximately hard worked by mat
ters of legislation. The average sena-
tor or representative devotes ten
hours to keeping solid" with his con-
stituents to where he devotes one hour
to necessary legislative labors.
Nor are the men who toll early and
late to hold on to their $500 year
salaries men of mediocre abilities.
Many of them could earn much more
at their chosen professions if they
worked at them half as hard. Lawy-
ers predominant, of course. and there
ought to be no dispute of the general
proposition that the lawyer who has
sufficient standing at home to be
elected to congress ought to earn
more than 1850 year if he remain
ed at home and worked as hard at be-
ing a lawyer IS &c works at being a
congressman.
The case is familiar of a member of
the house from Pennsylvania who re-
manned in congress twelve years and in
that time never made a speech and
never secured the passage of any sort
of legislation except his allotment of
private pension bills. But he never
overlooked an opportunity to write a
long and cordial personal letter to a
voter in his district. If there was any
voter in that district who didn't get "a
letter at least once year it was be-
cause the member of congress didn't
have his name. The result was that
this man remained in congress until
he died while more brilliant men who
sought to attract public attention to
themselves fell by the wayside-be
cause they had cultivated the lime
light instead of cultivating their con-
stituents. Last winter senator from
a southern state undertook to write
a personal letter to every man who
had signed his nominating petition
He got so badly swamped that he had
to resort to process" letters, but it
is doubtful if many of the recipients
recognized in them anything but an
individual personal communication.
Another member of the house,
young Texan, spends all his summer
vacations travelling over his district,
the area Of which equals some of the
New England states, and it is declared
he knows every man, woman, child
and dog in the eleven counties he re-
presents. He justifies this course by
pointing to the fact that other ambi-
tious democrats have given up trying
to defeat him for the nomination.
Some Try Sensations.
Other members of congress do more
or less spectacular things, especially
when they are serving their first
terms, as means of impressing their
constituents with the fact that they
are energetic and useful. AS an ex-
ample, Albert Douglas, who is serving
his first term as the successor of the
veteran Gen. Grosvenor. made trip
to Europe this summer for the pur-
pose of studying coal mining in Wales
and Belgium. Mr.. Douglas. has a