The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-02-11

formation is now beginning to be open
 cd up through a systematic indexing
 of the ConEresslonai Record. 1t Will
 make the ordinary encyclopedia seem
 like q small work in comparison. This
 gold mine has more than half q mH-
 lion pages, at least one-half chock
 full of Information, but nothing except
 a subjecS index can make its contents
 available. Imagine the contents of a
 modern encylopedia with all It's sub-
 jects jumped together without order
 or system, and you. will have a nina
 ture picture of the thousand columns
 which constitute the record of the
 things said and done In the sixty Con-
 gresses that have met. But now 1t
 Is all to be systematized. and, through
 card indexes made available for daily
 reference. The subject index that is
 to make 1t SO is being prepared by the
 librarian of the House of Representa-
 tives. John !. Boobar. and his assis-
 tants
 During each of the sixty Congresses
 that have held sessions there have
 been anywhere from one hundred to
 nearly five hundred members. These
 have been men among men. the choice
 of their constituents Each of them has sought to promote his own inter- ests and to advance the cause of his party, and has brought the best con tribution within his power to enrich
 the Congressional Record. With over six thousand picked contributors, near
 ly every one with a speciality. handling his self-chosen subject like specia- l list. with the debates taking the widest possible range. 1t Is easy to see what a mass of information lies in the Re- cord waiting to be put in available reach by the Boobar index. This will | be an Index of speakers as well as of speeches which makes it still more valuable.
 To show the thoroughness with l which 1t is prepared 1t might be said l that to index the speeches of the | Flfty-ninth Congress alone required
 more than 2o.o00 cards. It Is faithful even to the smallest detail, and It's cross references are abundant enough | to enable even the amateuer to find that l for which he Is seeking. Last winter John Wesley Gaines. who represen ts the old Andrew Jackson district In Congress- and Representative Burle- son of Texas had a set-to over the mis- tletoe. Burleson declared 1t parasi- l tic plant that harms the trees on which | is grows The knightly soul of Gaines was shocked to its core with such talk, and he proceeded to rattle the very emblazoned sky flights of that historic hall with his eioquence in defending the mlstletoe from the ln- sirious attack, and in declaring it the faIrest flower In the garden Of love. That gem of oratory might as well be buried in the sands of the Sahara as to be left in the Congressional Record without subject index. With such an Index the world will always be able to find this memorable defense Of the mistletoe.
 Not long ago Champ Clark was dis cusslng all things in general and the tariff on art in particular. He Is an observing man, and called the attention of the House to the fact that an In- dian in picture in the rotunda of the Capitol had been pFinted with six toes. It was the picture of the bap- tism of Pocahontas, and from that day
 to this every Washington tourist has
 had those six toes pointed out to him by the Capitol guides. The new card index Is faithful in even so small a matter as this.
 Mr. Boobar took up his work more
 as a pastime than anything else. He | was appointed librarian in 1900, from Minnesota, and brought to his posi- | ton q remarkable fund of energy. He says that no attache of Congress Ia
 worked so hard as to be In danger of nervous prostratton from overworlS; and that he thought the best way to utiltze his spare time was by doing something useful. So he fell to Index ing the proceedings of the current ses- sion of Congress. He has kept this up until he now has a complete index of both sessions of the Fifty-ninth Con- gress and of the first session of the Sixtleth. During his spare time he Is going back to Index the Fifty eighth Congress
 Card indexing Is about as tedious business as one can very well imagine It is like feeding a. furnace with a teaspoon. But Boobar and his assls- tants have been faithful at the task. They expect to continue this work as the sessions pass, and even If they are not able to carry 1t back to the
 beginning they will catch all the good
 things of the future. The librarian and his stan are getting no extra pay for their work. Whether they ever set any or not. they propose to carry the index through the coming years
 and back as far into the past as their
 time will allow, Boobar's attitude is
 this: What boots 1t whether I ever
 get any pay. am doing my best
 to make a good index. and if I succeed
 ln that shall have rendered a great
 service whether am paid for 1t or
 not" He hopes to do his work so well
 that Congress may eventually decide
 to have the records of all past Con-
 gresses indexed. and will give him men
 to do 1t.
 Anyone who has had anything to do
 with card indexes must appreciate the
 appropriateness of that task. Crudens'
 Concordance is recognized as a work
 of monumental proportions, and yet
 is was but a pleasant litle diversion
 as compared with Ahe indexing of
 the proeeerings of sixty congresses.
 Many a single session fills 10000 pages
 of closely printed matter, and each
 Congress has two sessions at least. A
 single session may turn out ten, ,OO0-
 page quarto volumes Of course the
 first congresses were not as wordy as some of the more recent ones. A sim
 gle octave volume sufflces to give a
 synopsis of every speech delivered in
 both sessions of the First Congress.
 The value of a card index of con gressional proceedings to the count. try at large can be readily Illustrated Tn every important community there are bound copies of the Congressional Record covering many years, but not SO useful as they might be if properly indexed. Congress can authorize du- plieate lists of the cards printed, to be given. or sold at actual cost to the various newspapers and libraries which have card indexes. and thus make the record a sort of community encylope- dia. Thik of what it would mean to the student of the tariff to be able to get a complete index of the congress sional debates from the beginning, aid to the stundent of finance to get a complete index to the discusions of the l