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WATCHING PRESIDENT WILSON
AT WORK

HOW HIS VISITORS ARE HANDLED, WHO MAY SEE HIM AND WHEN, HIS METHOD AND
MANNER IN INTERVIEWS — A PICTUre of the sWIFTLY MOVING DRAMA AT
THE WHITE HOUSE WHERE A NEW PAGE OF HISTORY IS WRITTEN
EVERY DAY - A COMPARISON WITH THE CONDITIONS UNDER

W

PRESIDENTS ROOSEVELT AND TAFT

BY

WILLIAM BAYARD HALE

OODROW WILSON is in the White House.

He is the same man as he who a few weeks ago was sitting in his rooms at the back of the New Jersey State Capitol - the same man, at the same sort of work, with the same manners and methods. He wears the same gray suit, or another off the same piece, built by the same tailor. There is a new stick-pin in his tie; he has exchanged the seal of the Union for that of his old state; but if the tie is new, it is an amazing match for the old ones. Pince-nez eyeglass, pencil and notebook, still perform their offices.

The President has already made some new acquaintances, a few thousands; but he hasn't forgotten any one the Governor ever knew. The President's secretary still calls him "Governor," and probably always will; it is a most happy and fortunate thing that Mr. Joseph P. Tumulty has come along to Washington; and he has brought his two best Trenton stenographers with him. There were three days a Saturday afternoon, a Sunday, a Monday, and a Tuesday morning when Mr. Wilson rested, as a private citizen, but that was not long enough to allow him to forget his old ways of work. At 9 o'clock on the morning of the fourth day he was employing them again as if there had been no interruption, though the scene was slightly altered.

The building in which the head of a nation meets his counselors, directs his

officers, puts his signature on papers of State, the building from which go forth the commands of a nation, is the onestoried staff annex to the White House which, to all official intents and purposes, is the White House. Looking at the plan of the place, you get the impression of a puzzle. These offices were devised, you suspect, to keep people away from the President - who can be reached only after threading a labyrinth of chambers and corridors. Until Mr. Wilson came down it was a difficult and hazardous feat to get into the inmost sanctum. Ordinary visitors, after passing the scrutiny of policemen in uniform outside the door and secret service men in mufti just within it, were steered into one waiting-room; persons like Senators and Representatives, into another. It was as difficult to get into the office of the Secretary to the President as it is to-day to get into the President's own room. Doorkeepers moved mysteriously about, beckoning now to this fortunate one, now to that one. And when he was at last admitted to the Presidential presence, the caller found himself only one of four or five or possibly twenty men lining the walls of an oval room, around which the President passed, listening and replying to a few rapid, lowspoken words from each the room being, by the way, a whispering gallery in which no muttered secret was safe.

To-day, the general waiting-room is abandoned, and the congressional room is occupied by stenographers. Visitors who know the way walk unchecked

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PLAN OF THE EXECUTIVE OFFICES OF THE PRESIDENT

UNDER MR. WILSON "THE GENERAL WAITING-ROOM IS ABANDONED, AND THE CONGRESSIONAL ROOM IS OCCUPIED THE SECRETARY'S ROOM HAS BECOME THE WAITING-ROOM"

BY STENOGRAPHERS.

To tell the truth, it is just as hard to get to the President as ever it was. Doubtless any one so minded could walk straight on through the short hall that leads to the oval room and confront the President

of lively interest. Mr. Tumulty has an hour to himself in the morning; he is the earliest riser in official life Washington has ever known, and he has been over his mail by the time the first callers begin to

arrive. The President likewise has been at work with his stenographer for an hour or two before the first appointments begin, say at ten o'clock. At that time the Secretary's room is filled, and it continues to be filled until after one o'clock. An enumeration, at any moment during the morning, of the men, numbering from a dozen to twenty or thirty, to be found there waiting their turns, would be a list practically every name of which would be recognized as that of a national person. At any moment you may be speaking to a Cabinet minister, rubbing elbows with three or four Senators, stepping on the toes of a Supreme Court Justice, or knocking against an army officer of high degree.

The rule is that no visitor may see the President without an appointment previously made. A list of expected visitors, every one of whom is assigned a period of from two to twenty minutes, is prepared the first thing in the morning. The programme is carried out almost with the accuracy of a railroad timetable. By twelve o'clock the morning's work may possibly be ten minutes behind the schedule; it generally finishes pretty promptly on time; not infrequently with a few spare minutes into which to crowd an additional interview or two. There may be, there generally are, four or five visitors, probably of distinction, who have called without appointment, and who wait, hoping that an opportunity may come by chance to whisper the word they are anxious should reach the President's ear. Such opportunities rarely come. Occasionally the President steps out of his room and makes a hasty round of the outer office, but these occasions are few, and Washington officials are coming to understand that while they may see the President's Secretary at any moment, it is only by appointment previously made that they have much prospect of getting a word with Mr. Wilson himself.

That is to say, during the morning; and by universal consent morning is the time devoted to making and receiving official calls. President Roosevelt and President Taft used to keep open half an hour between noon and twelve-thirty for a sort of general reception when those who were

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Over by the mantel is a nervous Congressman from Long Island. Equally nervous is a Wisconsin statesman, or statesman-to-be - Mr. "Joe" Davies, who has a handsome profile; he is talking with another, the other, specimen of Democratic pulchritude - Mr. A. Mitchell Palmer; the Pennsylvanian is as big and fair as the Wisconsin man is delicate and black.

Enters Joseph Gurney Cannon, the irrepressible, with his carnation in his buttonhole, radiating benevolence and biblical quotations. "I have been advised," he begins cheerfully —“Uncle Joe" is actually going home, after thirty-eight years in Congress "I have been advised that it is time I made my peace with God. Well, I am afraid I couldn't get an audience with the Almighty, but I can at least hope to see the President. He may have some influence at the throne of grace." The ex-Speaker holds his own little court in the midst of the room, quizzed by Senators and Cabinet members.

Here is an anxious politician from Porto Rico. Here is Mr. Pleasant Stovall, an old playmate of Mr. Wilson's, whom the Senators and Congressmen of Georgia. unite in recommending for the legation in Switzerland. The blind Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Gore, has an early appointment for which he is promptly on hand.

Mr. Montague, of Virginia, has been waiting two hours, as yesterday he waited, hoping for a chance to reach the President

with the representations which the Progressive Democrats of the Old Dominion are anxious Mr. Wilson should consider before he decides between Mr. Thomas Nelson Page and Colonel Joseph E. Willard for a foreign mission. The Page-Willard fight is preliminary to one all along the line as to the distribution of patronage. Tomorrow it will be the Texas Wilson Democrats; the next day the Progressive Democrats of Alabama; then those of Maryland, of Kentucky, etc., who are urging that only those who have proven their sympathy with the Administration be put on guard. And their adversaries will be there, too, ready to empurple Mr. Tumulty's carpet with sanguinary gore.

Mr. Montague, who was Governor of Virginia once, now has become a Congressman and might easily have been chosen for the Cabinet, but his errand this time is political and it is next to impossible to get to Mr. Wilson direct with a purely political appeal. At the outset of his administration President Wilson announced, to the consternation of the pie-hunters, that he himself would not receive candidates for office or their friends. Such as came to him he referred to the heads of the several departments. He went so far as to decline to talk with Congressmen and even Senators on the subject of patronage, and, though it has proven impossible to banish all discussion of candidates from the White House, the President has shown the utmost determination to save his energies just as far as possible for the real tasks of government, leaving the filling of offices to the members of his Cabinet. Nevertheless, during the early days of his term, candidates and their friends flocked to the executive offices. They came back the They came back the second day and the third day, the spark of hope still smouldering in their breasts. They stood about the Secretary's office watching the slow hands of the clock that mark the hours eventful of so much in the Nation's contemporaneous history and yet disappointing to so many personal ambitions.

Four of them who had been standing in a corner for hours one day caught the eye of an old statesman as he came out from his talk with the President; he turned and

whispered to Mr. Tumulty: "They also want to serve who only stand and wait."

Here is a young man who spent last summer at the National Headquarters; he had his salary, to be sure, but he thinks he ought to have "recognition" besides. The gray-bearded man sitting there is Mr. Henry Gassaway Davis-once the Democratic nominee for Vice-president of the United States. It is his second day on the scene; he was once a Senator, but he forgot yesterday that a Cabinet day is scarcely one upon which a casual visitor can hope for a glimpse of the President. Mr. Marshall has been in and has gone; wise man that he is, he was bent on no other errand than to pay a moment's respects to his chief, and he was satisfied to do that through the Secretary.

Briskly moving about in animated conversation is a young man generally counted one of the new President's favorites - a pleasing enough chap with the weight of the world on his shoulders and the confidence in his ability to carry it in his eye. He has not yet given up hope of landing a $12,000 job with the aid of a father-in-law in the Senate. But he will not get in to-day.

Mr. Perry Belmont has come in to tell the President, if permitted to, that he made two speeches last night, one in Washington, the other in Baltimore, where he expatiated upon the significance of the New Freedom. Mayor Preston, of Baltimore, whose lavish (but unprofitable) hospitality delegates to the last Democratic Convention will well remember, is here to invite the President to attend a performance to be given for the benefit of the families of men killed in the dynamite explosion at Baltimore. Over there, talking with Senator Luke Lea, is Representative Sims, of Tennes see; Mr. Sims had an appointment at this hour yesterday but was a minute and a half late and missed his chance.

Mr. Underwood, chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, comes in on the dot for his appointment of half an hour. Mr. Underwood tells the President that his Committee will have a tariff bill ready to report to Congress at the extra session to begin April 7th.

The Secretary of War has twenty

minutes' conference with the President, the two discussing the future of the Philippines.

A man enters, has a moment's whispered conversation with Mr. Tumulty, who takes him to the President irrespective of what is going on in the inner room. It is regarding the case of a soldier under sentence to die to-morrow in Arizona. A reprieve has suddenly become advisable; in two minutes the reprieve is granted.

The President is ahead of his schedule; there are three or four minutes to spare before the next visitor is due, and Mr. Wilson steps into the anteroom and greets the few callers gathered there. He steps briskly; always alert and vigorous, Mr. Wilson's movements have taken on a new vivacity, a new swiftness, since he came down to Washington. He was always a fast walker, for instance, but when he is seen on the streets here he is almost racing along. He moves about the executive offices with as rapid a pace as Roosevelt ever used, and he covers the distance between his office and the White House in breathless time. The fact is the President lives in constant dread of the office-seeker, who lies in wait at every door, in every passageway, along every path, by which he hopes the President may pass.

There is a general hush as the President enters the Secretary's room. Everybody is instantly on his feet. Very rapidly Mr. Wilson passes from man to man, usually with nothing more than a smile of greeting and a handshake; here and there, a low petition is spoken; now and again a paper comes out of a pocket. It is all over in a moment, however, and the dark designs of a dozen aspirants have been frustrated. They have "paid their respects," the errand on which they ostensibly came, and they have not preferred the requests which they expected casually to mention. When Theodore Roosevelt used to come prancing out into the waiting-room, the air was suddenly filled with the sputter and crackle of words discharged like rifle shots. When Taft came out, the room was suddenly one broad smile. He made the rounds, pretended to listen, cracked a little joke here and there, and disappeared in a general gasp of merriment. Woodrow Wilson can laugh as heartily as any one, but when

about this business of the Presidency he doesn't; the benignancy of his nature shines through a face usually serious and very often overcast with deepest gravity. Very swiftly, the room fills up again. In comes Senator Ransdell, of Louisiana, ånd Colonel Robert Ewing of that state. The sugar schedule requires much looking after. The editor of an Atlanta newspaper is on time for his appointment. This newcomer, pulling at a piratical moustache greatly at odds with his cherubic face, is Delaware's new Senator, Willard Saulsbury.

But now approaches the sensation of the morning, in the person of William Jennings Bryan. He has just passed through the salvos of the camera batteries at the entrance, his celebrated grin outdoing the best performance of the Cheshire cat; Mr. Bryan seems a very happy man and is winning new friends every minute, moving, as he does, surrounded by a magnetic field. It is five minutes before the President learns of his chief Minister's arrival; then the two go into the little room for a half hour of intimate talk.

Mr. McAdoo has a way of slipping in by the other entrance. To-day he brings with him George Foster Peabody - one man who, in spite of his reputed Democracy, is trying to keep out of office.

News has just been handed in from the telegraph room that the New Hampshire legislature deadlock is broken, and Hollis, the Democrat, is elected United States Senator. "Good!" cries the President, for a moment forgetting some serious business in hand, and "Good!" echo twenty lusty throats.

Just as the Gridiron Club delegation. comes in six of the best-looking, at all events of the best-fed, members of that famous association of writers and funmakers. They have come armed to the teeth with six unanswerable speeches. Unanswerable and unanswered - because never made. The President capitulated on sight. He will appear at the next Gridiron dinner. The interview, scheduled for ten minutes, lasted fifty seconds.

The wife of a Princeton professor has waited till half-past one to exchange a word with Mr. Wilson. The opportunity comes at last.

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