Judge — April 1937 — page 20: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ASHINGTON in the District of Columbia is the forty-ninth State of our Union and is a State of Mind. It is the most disorderly State known to man. kind without rhyme or reason or sense of direction, Those who claim citizenship willingly exchange the right of franchise for the privilege of nodding to the great and near great in a quickly passing mo- ment. Nobody is going anywhere in Washington except to a tea, a cocktail party or an important conference which starts five hours late and which every- body forgets five minutes after it is over. Man attains his fullest share of adoration in this village in the swamps because there are five females to every male and anything short of a wheel chair occupant is sure of flattering attention. Everywhere else in the world break- fast time marks the beginning of the first of a series of meals during the day. Here it is important chiefly because it is the time when you begin to get it “straight from the horse's mouth.” In one block in any direction from any hotel you can meet fifty men who will assure you that they have either had breakfast with the President, talked to Farley while he shaved, just had a telephone call from Ickes, met the British Ambassador in a washroom, ran smack into her Nibbess Perkins, or otherwise learned authori- tively that “Bzzzz, Bzzzz, Bzzzz. is And if you think that isn’t important you don’t understand State affairs. Right now there is a one man revolu- tion marching on Washington and as a matter of fact its drums can be heard around all four walls. The name of the revolution is Westbrook Pegler. The frockcoats on Capitol Hill are worried over his insistent hammering at the lib- erties taken by officials with the Income Tax exemptions. A little trickle of letters is beginning to come in from the hinter- lands and there is nothing so trouble. some to the Hill as a trickle. The odds on Pegler's mad getting something done about it have shortened until now if you have laid any money at a hundred to one you should average it, at the prevailing odds of three to one. One of the rare sights from the Senate gallery is to watch Senator Joe Robinson deliberately work himself into a rage in defense of the Faith. Huey Long was the only Senator who could make him sput- ter bat there are quite a few still left who can make him roar. Every time Joe sits down after spanking a critic of the Ad- ministration you expect the clerk to call for volunteers to carry guns and throw tear bombs. When Ashurst sits down after raping the dictionary you expect a page to present him with a lovely corsage of pansies. ere are about the buildings on the Hill many rooms into which nobody 18 THE SENATOR-AT-LARGE goes. Some of them house old and in- teresting memories of historic happen- ings but there is one room over in the Senate office building to which nobody goes because its occupant, Vic Donahey of Ohio, discourages the idea of visitors, and anyhow he wouldn't be there if any- one did come unless the fish aren't biting in Chesapeake Bay. ROUND the corner of the same cor- ridor the senior Senator from Ohio, Robert J. Bulkley, is at work from eight o'clock in the morning until Mrs. Bulk. ley notifies him each night that she will hold dinner just another half hour and no longer. Everybody likes the idea but his secretariat and Bulkley quietly does a thorough job and wields a powerful in- fluence in affairs which is little publi- cized. Carter Glass thinks him the ablest Senator on the Hill and doesn’t hesitate to say so. He Harvarded with the Presi- dent and Lampooned with him. He doesn’t try for a Press but when the seventy-fourth and seventy-fifth Con. &tesses are appraised for their work Bulkley’s name will stand high. The Senators Bob make a nice contrast in motion. Cold-eyed LaFollette talks, thinks and moves like the steady thrust of a piston and starry-eyed Reynolds talks, thinks and moves like a gaily painted rubber ball. Any fishing resort in the northern Minnesota woods that had one taxicab and driver as terrible as all of them in Washington would lose its patronage over night. Practically all of these ve- hicles are manned by those descending the scale of political favor or just begin- ning to get what they consider a foot- hold on a march to greater heights. In every hip pocket wallet placed against every driver's seat is a letter which will prove to you that your chauffeur stands pretty high with somebody in California or Maine or elsewhere and that entitles you to be snooted and hauled your dis- tance in a moving odor reminiscent of the old back room in Nellie’s place. —Harry NewMan. "I understand you fellows wanted to ask me a few questions.” Judge comicbooks.com