The Wilmington morning star., 1940-12-12
WASHING7ON
DAYBOOK
BY JACK

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1.-THE United States
Capitol is getting its face lifted-and what a
mess!
For the first time in 40 years, the House
of Representatives is meeting outside its own
hall-in the big, bright ways and means com.
mittee room in the new House Office building.
The Senate has turned back the calendar
nearly 81 years and is holding sessions in
the old Senate chamber just off the well OF
the little rotunda." Into this Mark Twain
once stared and probably thinking of Tom
Sawyer and Huck Finn, called it the spittoon
Of America
The reason for the face-lifting is that the
roofs of the Senate and House wings are sag
ging. David Lynn, Capitol architect, has been
warning for years that a heavy snow might
bring tons of glass and rubble down on the
heads of Congress.
Plans were to do a permanent job. of fitting
new beams into the roofs during adjournment
this summer and fall, but national defense
and a popular demand for Congress to stay
in session put a stop to that.
The congressman have hundreds Of letters
which say: Even if the Capitol comes down
on your heads. stay on the job" A demand
that strong couldn't be ignored, but it has
contributed to the mess, for so reluctant was
Congress to suspend operations that it now is
possible even the temporary job cannot be
completed by January 3 and the nth Congress
will have to convene in the present make
shift quarters.
Would Be Packed
For the members of the House, this would
be considerable inconvenience for as. large as
the committee room is, it would hardly be
more than a sardine can, packed with '435
members, employees and relatives and friends
who would want to be on hand for the cere-
mony.
The Senate, on the other hand, probably
wouldn't mind so much, for despite the incon-
venience, a lot of the gentlemen are getting
a big kick out Of running back through history
to their pre-Civil War quarters.
The old Senate chamber has been digniied
by 70 years of occupancy by the Supreme
Court (Which only vacated in 1880 and, by
being a hall Of mercy in those Civil War
years when the Capitol was converted into a
hospital tanother portion of the Capitol was a
bakery for army bread, but not the Senate
chamber). Although it is about 40 feet shorter
and narrower than their present chamber, it
still is a serviceable room and unlike the old
hall of representatives, not afflicted with
acoustical whispers and echoes.
The Past Unfolds
The tradition apparently is inspiring, for
you have only to hang around the corridors
these. days to have some senator buttonhole
you with stories of the last Senate to occupy
the room. There they'll tell you, sat Sam
Houston, the fiery Raven" of Texas history
and the hero Of San Jacinto. There sat JET
ferson Davis, the gentleman from Hurricane,
Miss, who was to become the Confederacy's
only president. And in the chair of the presi-
dent of the Senate, was Vice-President John
{. breckenridge, the Kentuckian, who was to
be expelled by the Senate and to become
Davis secretary of war. There also were little
Stephen A.. Douglas; and New York's political
giant. William H. Steward.
There, someone is sure to tell you, stood
Matthias Ward, the Texas Democrat appointed
to the Senate to fill the vacancy caused by
the death of J. Pinckney Henderson. On that
spot, ne stood and became the last man to
take the oath of office in the old chamber
On that same spot, 80 years later almost
to the day, stands Berkeley Bunker, Nevada