LOBBYISTS SWARM IN WASHINGTON
Kenyon, Senator W. S.
Lobbyists Swarm in Washington BY SENATOR W. S. KENYON I do not know where this lobbying business is going to stop. There are proper kinds of lobbies. Nobody wants Congress to be shut off here on...
...You can pick up the papers every day and read of dinners and dances and balls given by the Lord knows whom—a favorite form of lobbying in the city of Washington...
...You can not go to your office, you can not get through the corridors anywhere, without having some of these lobbyists talking to you about bills in Congress...
...There is going to be more of it in the days to come...
...The "general practice" of law in Washington is coming to be synonymous with "general lobbying...
...men go out of the Senate and men go out of the House and join up with these lobbies...
...I do not know that there is any way of stopping that kind of a lobby...
...There has been testimony before committees of social lobbies in the city of Washington, of gentlemen receiving funds from great interests to use in social lobbying...
...I believe that in order to carry on legislation here in the months to come we ought to have some kind of a law with relation to lobbying...
...The records of our Agricultural Committee in a certain investigation show that very thing...
...Then when they come before a committee, when they meet you in the halls, they meet you on your way home, they sit next to you on the street car and try to talk to you about bills, you know who they are and what they represent...
...but it is reaching a point nowadays where Washington is swarming with lobbies of every kind and description—some good lobbies and some bad lobbies...
...That is a lobby that is growing...
...Nobody wants Congress to be shut off here on the hill and have people unable to get to Congress...
...Nobody ought to object to that...
...I am not particularly objecting to that if it is known just exactly what these lobbyists are and who they represent...
...I have in my hand a list of gentlemen, some of whom are ex-Members of Congress and ex-officials of the Government, here in Washington in the interest of oil, lumber, and other questions before the departments...
...Kansas has that kind of a law, and I think a number of other states have laws requiring the registration of lobbyists, a statement of just whom the lobbyists represent, and the fees that are paid them...
...but there is existing now in the city of Washington, and it is going to grow, lobbying of certain kinds in lumber interests, oil interests, and other big interests...
Vol. 13 • January 1921 • No. 1
