Year: 1876




The Washington correspondent of the
New York Graphic writes:


There have never been so many memberl
of the House of Representatives sick as al
present. Messrs ketchum and Kelley, OF
Pennsylvania, are dangerously i'll; Mr.. La
mar has had to 60 South; Mr.. Starkweather
is dead, and it is greatly TO be feared that
some other members Of this famous House
will follow him. When the session opened
it was the current "gag" that the vile air of
the House was the result of diabolical
Yankee plot to poison the favorite sons of
the late c0nfederacy. But as the session
proceeded these favorite sons took into
their own hands the ventilation, like every
thing else in the House wing Of the Capitol,
and yet the air did not improve. Oddly
enough more Republicans than Democrats
ara sick, and the most heartrending COM
plants On the score of ventilation
and drafts have come from the Re-
publican side of the hall. No depre.
ciatory epithet that could he applied to air
would descend low enough to characterize
truthtully tho staff supplied to the popular
branch OF the national legislature 90 q
breathing medium. The only comfort that
legislators have is that their tornentors,
the correspondents. breathe worse air than
they co. No sunlight ever reaches any
part of the hall Of the House of Repre-
eentatives. The architect made padded
chamber for the men whom Americans de-
light to honor. Cloak rooms and dark
passages OF al! kinds carefully exclude all
sunlight. As sunlight is excluded so is
pure air. The air that is breathed in the
hall is that which the caterer has been
using in roasting hs meats and boiling
sav even this is diluted with the
ef]uyia of decaying animal matter. For
fear honorable legislators would get cold at
twelve o'clock, when the House meets, tho
windows are kept carefully closed all tho
morning. Any one who has ever been at
the Capitol can see at n glance that if it
were made somebody's duty to have all the
windows opening on the galleries and halls
opened for two hours every morning, say
from eight Oclock until ten o'clock, it would
do mere to give good atmosphere in the
hsil than ali the resolutions that could be
offered from now until Christmas. The
hall is badly arranged for ventilation,
but a few open windows would make the
necessity for better ventilation very much
less pressing. Besides, the kitchen ia q
great nuisance. AS long as the ventila-
tion and heating are conducted on the
present plan the presence Of y kitchen in
proximity to the fans and the heating ap-
paratus necessarily vitiates the air. There
is one thing needed more than anything
else in dealing with this important matter,
and that is a man to manage it. The
House is q talking machine and the officers
it baa misunderstanding the Speaker
will, hope, shine better on the stump than
they do in carrying on the business in hand
at present. Fifteen years of exile from
power have made the Democratic party q
rather feeble exponent &C the practical
talent of this country. The most trivial
<v,c eto -eho
the employ of the House is constantly ex-
pectirg to be investigated and hence his
action is paralyzed. Less investigation
and more work would be a better card for
party advancement than all investigatio
and no work.