4. CONSENT CALENDAR

H. R. 9199 Mr. O'Connor of Lou- A bill to prevent the pollution by

H. R. 8711 Mr. Graham of Penn- A bill to authorize the consolida

No.

437

449

476

484

28. Lobbies and Lobbyists in Washington

It would be almost impossible to compile a complete list of the interests which are represented in the Washington lobbies. Many of the most effective "legislative agents” work in secret, indirectly, or even from distant cities. It seems probable, however, that there are well over one hundred and fifty of these agencies, of which, however, only about sixty have sufficient financial or voting strength to make them really effective.

"These have formed themselves into what is called the Monday Lunch Club. It is a little-known organization and it does not court publicity, and it has had very little. Yet its members are, perhaps, the most influential group of men in the country. . . . Most of them represent great financial, business, or group interests. One member of this club has an annual salary of $75,000, and he is worth a good deal more than that to the protected interest he represents. All of them have large expense accounts.

"Most of them are agreeable, engaging fellows, who make friends, are in a position to reciprocate for favors, and know a whole lot about politics. As for intimate knowledge of Congressional and Senatorial personnel, of legislative procedure, of committees and the way they work, of bills and the way they are passed and beaten, there is no one in the country to compare to them."1

The following list of organizations is by no means complete. In fact, it does not contain some of the more important members of the Monday Club. It is, however, suggestive of the wide scope of interests which are represented at the capital.

SOURCES-Literary Digest, LXVII, Oct. 30, 1920, pp. 58-60. Reprinted in the Congressional Record, 66th Congress, 3d session, Vol. LX, 2413-2414 (Feb. 2, 1921); W. W. Willoughby and Lindsay Rogers, Introduction to the Problem of Government (Garden City, 1921), 493-497.

In a recent article in the Detroit News, Jay G. Hayden gives a list of 120 such lobbies, compiled from Washington directories 1 Frank R. Kent, The Great Game of Politics (Garden City, 1923), 271.

and the examination of the tenant lists of a number of the bestknown office-buildings in the city. The list is headed by the National Chamber of Commerce, which leads the business organiizations. Manufacturers' associations are given first, as follows:

National Association of Manufacturers.

American Manufacturers' Export Association.
Institute of American Meat Packers.

American Automobile Association.

National Canners' Association.

Council of American Cotton Manufacturers.

Founders' Association.

Lumber Manufacturers' Association.

Manufacturing Chemists' Association of America.
Highway Industries Association.

Interstate Cottonseed Crushers' Association.
Merchants and Manufacturers' Association.

Southern Industrial Education Society.

United States Sugar Manufacturers' Association.
Western Petroleum Refiners' Association.

Attached to nearly all these bureaus are experts on tax laws, the tariff, labor conditions, and every other thing that may have an immediate or a remote bearing on the interests they represent. Other bureaus, closely related to the foregoing, are the following:

American Association of Real Estate Boards.

American Automobile Chamber of Commerce.

National Bureau of Wholesale Lumber Distributors.

National Industries Conference Board.

National Merchant Marine Association.

League of Commission Merchants of the United States.
National Oil Bureau.

National Petroleum Association.

American Patent Law Association.

But perhaps the most thoroughly looked after industry is railroading. Chief of the bureaus under this heading is the American Railway Association, which operates the car-service bureau in close coöperation with the Interstate Commerce Commission and which also conducts a vigorous and constant propaganda in behalf of private ownership of the railways.

Attached to this bureau are several of the most capable statisticians and lawyers in the country, who are ever ready to supply information from the railway point of view to any congressional committee or elsewhere as it may be required. The railway asso

ciation is, in fact, a close rival for the Interstate Commerce Commission in the scope of its public operations.

In the past, local public utilities, such as street-railways, electric lighting and gas plants, were little in touch with the Federal Government. During the war, however, these companies were brought before the War Finance Corporation in the matter of security issues and before the War Labor Board for settlement of their disputes with employees. More recently the passage of the new water-power law, which places the development of the new hydroelectric enterprises under direction of a board composed of Secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture, and War has given these companies another reason for keen interest in the doings of the Government.

Among the utilities organizations already established in Washington are the following:

American Electric Railway War Board.

National Association of Railway and Public Utilities Commissions.
National Committee on Gas and Electric Service.

National Committee on Public Utilities Conditions.
Dixie Freight Traffic Association.

There is a growing activity of farm organizations looking to legislation [in] addition to the Farm Bureau, which, with 1,250 members, is now the leading farm organization in America. The societies of farmers with offices in Washington are as follows:

The American Agricultural Association.

Eastern Agricultural Bureau.

Farmers' National Council.

The Grange.

Cane Growers' Association.

National Board of Farm Organizations.
Texas Cotton Association.

Chief of the labor organizations in addition to the American Federation of Labor, which occupies an entire building of its own, are the organizations of Federal employees and the railroad brotherhoods.

Labor organizations, in addition to the very large number affiliated with the Federation of Labor, which maintain offices in the capital, are as follows:

National Federation of Federal Employees.
National Federation of Post-office Clerks.

National Association of Letter Carriers.

Brotherhood of Railway Clerks.

Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen.

Maintenance of Way Employees.

Plumb Plan League.

National Women's Trade Union League.

American Train Dispatchers' Association.

Women's organizations, which are active in promoting legislation before Congress, are by no means confined to the two leading suffrage associations, the National Women's Suffrage Association and the National Woman's Party. Others are as follows:

League of Women Voters.
Gentlewomen's League.
Congress of Mothers.

National W[oman's] C[hristian] T[emperance] U[nion.]
Woman's Section of the Navy League.

Child Welfare Society.

One of the most conspicuous organizations in Washington is the National Coal Association, which came into being to direct the fight of the coal operators against restrictive legislation, and to represent the industry in its relations with the Federal Coal Administration during the war. This association has been continued in Washington, and it employs a large staff of experts in looking after its special interests in the Government and in propaganda distribution.

The representatives of racial groups and embryo governments seeking favors from the American Government are very much in evidence in the offices of Members of Congress and in the lobbies of the Capitol. Some of these racial organizations are as follows:

Irish National Bureau.

Poland Information Bureau.
Lithuanian National Council.

Lithuanian Information Bureau.

Bureau of Jewish Statistics.

National Association of Colored Races.

Jewish Press Service of America.

National Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief.

British-Canadian Society.

Friends of the Ukraine.

Korean Relief Society League.

Associations specially devoted to the suppression of the liquor traffic, in addition to the Anti-Saloon League, are the Board of Temperance of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the National Temperance Bureau.

Organizations of liquor dealers no longer appear as such among the Washington lobbyists. Through paid press agents, however, propaganda in favor of modification of the alcoholic content, as prescribed in the Volstead law, has been recently circulated.