Evening star., 1941-05-25
Capital SideIights
By Will P. Kennedy.

The United States Civil Service re-
tirement law came OF age last Thursday.
Successive Presidents and leaders in
Congress have called it the most hu-
manltarlan act ever written and it is
generally considered the best retirement
law in the world. Approved May %,
1920, it applies TO about 10000 Gov
ernment employees, whose contributions
to the annuity fund amount to some
S42,0000 900 a year. Approximately 5000
persons are now drawing benefits. Mark
Thrash, a colored man who worked in
the Treasury Department, now living IN
Georgia, and who is 12O years Of age. is
the Oldest living retired employe. He
has twin brother living in South Amer
lea and son who is 90.
There is daily at work in the Capitol,
pleasant, unassuming obliging little gen.
tleman. Robert H. Alcorn, who has Just
rounded out 81 years of continuous effort.
day and night, to get this law enacted
originally the Sterling-Lehlbach bill
and through the succeeding d years 20
amendments. the most important being
those OF May 90, 1880, and August 4, 1899.
Every member OF Congress for more than
30 years has known him well and re-
Spected him highly. For 26 years Mr..
Alcorn has devoted his entire time to
cooperating with members of CONGRESS
and Government workers to make the
retirement law as nearly perfect as pos
slbe and a model for all the world Mr.
AlCorn was born and raised in a log
cabin on a farm in the foothills Of the
Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, within
10 miles OF Roanoke. He was orphaned
when young and started as mere child
to earn his living the hard way. He
learned to be a molder in the Norfolk
and Washington railroad shops In 1910
while he was with the Newport News
Shipbuilding Co, received a call to the
naval gun factory here. He soon was
named as a delegate to the JOINT Retire
ment Committee Of the employees of
the Washington Navy Yard to promote
retirement legislation so that old. super
annuated and disabled workers could
have some protection for the days when
they no longer could serve. 1t was largely
through his efforts that various groups
which had been working at crosS-pur-
poses, united in 1917 in the Joint Con-
ference on Retirement" and he is the
only chairman that conference ever has
had. He also is national representative
OF the Retirement Federation OF Civil
Service Employees of Navy Yards, Naval
Stations and ArSenalS. So it is with good
right that Mr.. AlCorn is called the
father of Civil Service retirement"
Merrill c. Dougherty, registry, stamp
and money-order clerk in the branch
post Office in the New House Office Build
ing, has achieved a unique distinction.
The Congressional Record departed from
its accustomed style" to print poem he
wrote on Crosses in Flanders" shaped
in the form of cross.
There will be no blackout of the
Bible" says Representative James A.
Stanley of Connecticut, who points to
two notices of unusual spiritual import
just received by all Members of Congress. |
One Is from the American Bible Society
O1 4>CW 1O1h, Will lSGCeI lIOIIl SIOl.
William Lyon Phelps of Yale, and the
other regarding the publication of a
Roman Catholic New Testament, revision
of the Challoner Rheims version, in
dorsed by the president of the Pontif1cal
Biblical Commission, Eugene Cardinal
Tisserant. These two organizations
representing the Potestant and Catholic
faiths-are fulfilling a truly democratic
mission" says Mr.. Stanley, when they
seek to place in the home of every one
of their communicates the New Testa-
ment."
THE Lion of Idaho" is the title of a
poem by Horace c. Carlisle, which Rep
resentative Compton I. White of Idaho
has had printed in the Congressional
Record as tribute to national lead
er"-the late Senator William E. Borah
Il