THE PRESSURE BOYS
Kent, Carleton
The Pressure Boys THE LOBBYISTS, by. Karl Schriftgiesser. Little, Brown & Co. 253 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by Carleton Kent TN THIS book Karl Schriftgiesser J. has set about the public service of...
...II The bulk of The Lobbyists amounts to an astute boil-down and re-write of reports made by the Buchanan special House Committee after examining the operations of the Lobby Registration Act for four years...
...The "tidelands" oil lobby, the insurance lobby, the current natural gas and other public utilities lobbies, and other present-day pressure groups that have been having it awfully good here for years are not discussed...
...His method seems to have been to absorb an enormous mass of exciting material, as indicated by a fat bibliography, and then squeeze out much of the juice and flavor before passing it on to the reader...
...Not mentioned is the powerful meat lobby, which spearheaded a 1946 campaign that broke up price controls and won a national election for the Republicans...
...Neither is the fascinating subject of lawyer-lobbyists who, according to the Senate Ethics in Government sub-committee, are now so ubiquitous as to have "tinged" even the most professional legal practice in Washington with "the influence idea...
...This, too, is valuable, for the Committee's work received too little attention from most of the Washington press corps...
...Schriftgiesser says he has not tried to "expose" the lobby-agents, as they were called in Andrew Jackson's time...
...It needn't show its hand openly in Washington at all, for it uses the Congressman's doctor, dentist, lawyer, banker, and mortgage holder to let him know where he should stand on legislation...
...But perhaps it received too much from Schriftgies-ser, and the book does not demonstrate the expert kind of independent and purposeful digging into lobbies that can be expected of him...
...This might serve as the preamble to the Lobby Registration Act included in the 1946 LaFollette-Mon-roney law aimed at streamlining Congress...
...And yet it is a valuable book, for it reminds the public that it must be forever suspicious and inclined to moral indignation over the aims and tactics of the special interests and pressure boys...
...And it makes the excellent point that "it is when party leadership and party responsibility are weakest that the lobbies are strongest and get away with the most...
...It is written in a low key...
...He barely mentions "grassroots" lobbying, which is perhaps the most effective form of the art and business...
...In The Lobbyists Washington correspondents are taken to task for not properly covering the important story of national pressure politics...
...His aim was rather "to show the extent of lobbying as it is practiced in Washington and the hinterland...
...There is not much of an example set here, although Schriftgiesser had time, space, and perspective—along with editorial freedom—lacking to many reporters for daily papers...
...The author also admits to an admirable prejudice which prompted him to write the book: "I believe that any citizen who petitions the government for a redress of grievances should stand up and say who he is, and what he wants, why he wants it, and who paid his way...
...It tells how Woodrow Wilson, with the stout help of Southern Democrats like Cordell Hull and Oscar Underwood, drove the rollicking tariff lobbyists out of Washtogton, at least for awhile...
...Reviewed by Carleton Kent TN THIS book Karl Schriftgiesser J. has set about the public service of bringing the nation up to date on what he calls "the art and business of influencing lawmakers...
...Its pace is uneven...
Vol. 15 • December 1951 • No. 12
