Log-Rolling at Washington

THERE is a tradition in Washington that the lobby arose while General Jackson was waging war against the last United States Bank, from 1830 to 1836. But lobbying is as ancient as governing. It is also as legitimate and necessary, since the governing power is in need of the special knowledge which it is the proper office of a lobby to supply. It is only when the governing power is weak or corrupt or too transient, that there is danger of the lobby laying aside its modest office of supplying information, and assuming the mastery. As weak kings are governed by favorites and mistresses, so ill-constituted parliaments are governed by lobbies.

And, speaking of weak kings and their lobby of favorites, it was interesting to observe in Washington, during the administration of Andrew Johnson, how the vices of the old courts reappeared with the circumstances that produced them. A recent writer gives a short description of the rapacious lobby that surrounded the Scotchman called James I., king of England, every word of which applies with exactness to the state of things in Washington during the two years ending March 4, 1869: “In addition to the officials whose pay was nearly nominal, the king was surrounded by a crowd of hungry courtiers whose pay was nothing at all. To them flocked day by day all who had any favor to beg, and who hoped that a little money judiciously expended would smooth the way before them. Some of the applicants, no doubt, were honest men, who merely wanted to get a chance of doing honest work. But there were not a few whose only object was to enrich themselves in some discreditable way, and who were ready to share the booty with those who would lend them a helping hand in their roguery.” ¹

Every well-informed resident of Washington will recognize the literal truth of the description. Like king, like lobby. Johnson was probably not a corrupt man, in the lowest sense of the word. His refusal of the carriage and horses offered to him by his admirers may not have been the mere buncombe it was supposed to be ; and he probably went home to Tennessee carrying with him only the savings of his salary, and the contempt of the universe. And yet he could hardly have been ignorant that prostitutes of one sex sold his pardons, and prostitutes of another sex sold his offices. James I. of England, who also had his pardon lobby and his ‘‘appointment lobby,” was aware, probably, that his favorites sold him every day, and was perhaps not unwilling to enrich them in so economical a manner. There are people whose self-love is such that they can associate happily only with their worshippers, having always to be on their good behavior with equals, which is irksome. These flatterers of Johnson were a relief to him after consorting with gentlemen, and he freely paid them for their gossip and adulation with the goods intrusted to his administration. Around such men as James I. and Andrew Johnson — infirm of purpose and yet pig-headedly obstinate, ignorant but unteachable, bashful and vain, transplanted from a lower to a higher civilization — a corrupt and vulgar lobby naturally gathers ; for there will always be an affinity, if not a resemblance, between the lobby and the power which it influences. When Cromwell was Protector, great Milton wrote the foreign despatches, — the alliance being natural between real power and special knowledge. Character raised the unlettered Washington to a genuine equality with the men around him, who knew so much more than he. Fancy him chatting familiarly on a sofa of the Presidential mansion with a woman of the street, or giving valuable appointments at the solicitation of a purchased renegade !

The founder of our Congressional lobby was Alexander Hamilton; and his great achievement as a log-roller was a perfect specimen of the art, both in its modes and its results. There was, it is true, a resolute and acrimonious lobby at the time of “ the Congress,” — the body that governed the thirteen States during the Revolutionary War ; the Lee lobby; for example, that nearly succeeded in getting Franklin recalled from France, and would have done it but for the superior lobbying of the French minister. But, under the present Constitution, Hamilton was the great original lobbyist ; and, as they still employ some of his methods of administration in the Treasury Department, so the Washington lobby still uses his tactics in carrying bills through Congress.

There were two distracting bills before Congress in the spring of 1790; one proposing that the general government should assume the debts (twentyone millions of dollars in all) incurred by the several States during the Revolutionary War; the other a bill for removing the capital from New York to Philadelphia, where it should remain ten years, and then be transferred to the shores of the Potomac. Neither of these bills could command a majority of both Houses. The creation of a city in the wilderness, far from every source of the supplies needful for a government, when commodious cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, abounding in every requisite, already existed, seemed to the disinterested portion of Congress just as absurd as it does to us ; and the measure, on its merits, never could have .been passed. The opposition to it, however, though decided enough, was mild and trifling compared with the abhorrence and disgust excited by the Assumption Bill. It is not easy for a student of the present day to account for the singular violence of this opposition to a measure which seems to us reasonable, natural, and just.

Except the Missouri Compromise struggle, this contest was, as Mr. Jefferson remarks, the “ most bitter and angry ever known in Congress before or since the union of the States.” Why ? It was not the magnitude of the sum involved, although twenty-one millions in 1790 was as great an addition to the public burden as two hundred millions would be now. Nor were the debts of the two sections far from being equal. If Massachusetts owed four millions, so did South Carolina. New Hampshire and Georgia each owed three hundred thousand. Rhode Island and Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland, had each the same debt. Nothing was proposed but the cancellation of the State bonds and the issue of United States bonds in their stead ; and this, because the debts had been incurred for the common cause.

The rancor of the Southern opposition arose partly from their State pride and their dread of centralization, but chiefly, as it seems, from their rustic, provincial detestation of what they called stock-jobbing. To the country gentlemen it seemed undeniable, that a man who bought a soldier’s claim in 1789 at its market value, and sold it in 1790 at its market value, and thus gained two hundred dollars, had cheated a scarred veteran of the Revolution out of a portion of his nobly-earned “ pittance ” by “insidious arts.” There were wild stories afloat of the fortunes made by New York speculators who had contrived to get early information of Hamilton’s funding policy. It was said that, as soon as the passage of the Funding Bill became pretty certain, three swift pilot-boats had slipped out of harbor, winged for distant ports, to buy up the depreciated claims. “ Couriers and relay-horses by land,” says Jefferson, “and swift-sailing pilotboats by sea, were flying in all directions.” Members fully believed this, and doubtless the lobby was not inattentive to its interest on this occasion, and did turn its knowledge to account. Cruel wrong, no doubt, was done to war-worn patriots and lonely widows, ignorant of what was passing in New York ; and country members did themselves honor by their eloquent disgust at such heartless spoliation. It was this feeling that caused the loss, by a small majority, of the Assumption Bill, which the Southern members regarded only as a device to supply the Wall Street of that day with twenty-one millions of additional material upon which to exercise its “ insidious arts.”

But, in the course of the long and most keenly contested debate on the bill, the commercial members, too, had become heated; so that, when the bill was rejected, the feeling of the House was such that it was impossible to go on with the public business. The House abruptly adjourned. It met the next day, and again adjourned without attempting to transact business. Congress met every morning for several days, Mr. Jefferson records, only to adjourn immediately, “the parties being too much out of temper to do business together,” and some of the members threatening a “ secession and dissolution.”

Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, upon whose report the defeated bill had been founded, and of whose system the assumption was an important part, was distressed and alarmed. But the resource of the lobby remained. In the nick of time he met in the street Mr. Jefferson, recently returned from France, and then Secretary of State. To him the anxious financier depicted the terms of the situation, “ walking him backwards and forwards before the President’s door for half an hour,” and calling upon him as his colleague and the friend of General Washington to rally to the support of the administration, and save at once it, the measure, and the Union. As the bill had been lost by a very small majority, General Hamilton thought it probable that “ an appeal ” from so influential a Virginian “ to the judgment and discretion of some of his friends might effect a change in the vote,” and set the machine of government going again. “ Come and dine with me to-morrow,” said Mr. Jefferson, “ and I will ask a friend or two to meet you, and we will talk it over.”

Fatal dinner! How often, amid the dust and desolate vastness of Washington, its hopeless shabbiness, dulness, and dearness, have I wished that the soup that day had disagreed with these gentlemen, and they had been obliged to go home before the removal of the cloth had introduced the business of the occasion ! But it did not. The dinner put the guests into a compliant humor. The city of Washington was destined to exist, first, as the capital of the country, and, after that, as a marble quarry for posterity, having the peculiarity of furnishing the marble ready cut. The discussion took place, and the company soon agreed that, whatever might be thought of assumption, disunion was worse, and that, therefore, the defeated bill must be reconsidered. But to effect this, some members must change their votes, must vote for a measure which they hated. This was a difficulty. The log was hard to roll, — “pill,” Mr. Jefferson styles it. “It was observed,” he says, “ that this pill would be peculiarly bitter to the Southern States, and that some concomitant measure should be adopted to sweeten it a little to them. There had before been propositions to fix the seat of government either at Philadelphia or at Georgetown on the Potomac ; and it was thought that by giving it to Philadelphia for ten years, and to Georgetown permanently afterwards, this might, as an anodyne, calm in some degree the ferment which might be excited by the other measure alone ; so two of the Potomac members (White and Lee, but the former with a revulsion of stomach almost convulsive) agreed to change their votes ; and Hamilton undertook to carry the other point.”

Thus log-rolling began ; or, as Mr. Jefferson would have named it, fillswallowing. Thus originated the art of making honest and patriotic men vote for measures of which they violently disapproved. It is surprising that the art should have been carried so far toward perfection in the first specimen, which, the lobby will observe, contained many of the important elements : two measures, neither of which could pass, each favored and each opposed by the same interests ; a compromise effected by social influence ; the precise terms arranged at a dinner ; and, finally, mischief the result, lasting, far-reaching, and irreparable. The evils resulting from assumption refuse to become apparent to a modern inquirer, although the democrats of the early day held the measure in execration, and continued to denounce it as long as they lived. But the evils which have flowed from “ the concomitant measure ” are evident enough, without reckoning the expense of providing a marble quarry of that singular character for posterity.

It is not surprising that a system begun by party leaders so distinguished should have been continued in a body every member of which comes to Washington in the double capacity of national representative and local claimagent. Every member has charge of some local or private interest, on which he alone is fully informed, and which cannot become the subject or a general debate. One wants a light-house on a rock which may wreck a fishing-smack in the course of ages. Another wishes his local harbor improved. Another desires increased protection on the fabric which his constituents manufacture. Very many are anxious for subsidies for branch railroads. Some are charged with the business of getting one more superfluous arsenal or navy-yard established. Most members feel a particular interest in some eminently reasonable claims upon the justice of Congress, which they are desirous to carry both for selfish and unselfish reasons. In many instances the private interest which a member has in charge is vital to him ; for it sent him to Congress, keeps him there. Every member, therefore, has votes to exchange for votes ; and it sometimes seems as if all legislation at Washington had degenerated into log-rolling. On almost any day in the latter half of a session a spectator may see specimens of all the three varieties of log-rolling, which are these: I. Help me to roll my log, and I ’ll help you to roll yours. 2. If you don’t help me to roll my log, I won’t help you to roll yours. 3. If you hinder the rolling of my log, yours shall never budge.

It may be that one of the logs ought to roll, and the other ought not. In that case, a member of Congress is subjected to the kind of temptation to which men not exceptionally strong in character or position may be expected to yield. And it is in this way that the astounding votes of respectable members may usually be explained, — their votes for public as well as for private objects. It needs little reflection to understand what an advantage, under the log-rolling system, an unscrupulous, pushing member has over one of really superior powers who is troubled with modesty and conscience, and who has to legislate in a hall where calm debate is useless because inaudible. It is also easy to see how an unscrupulous administration can go into the lobby, and get votes for national measures by compelling its adherents to vote for private or local ones.

As a rule, the more objectionable a measure the more numerous its lobby. Gentlemen of the press, in Washington, who contemplate life from the reporters’ gallery, say that the moral quality of a measure can usually be inferred from the buzz and stir that are to be observed about the Capitol when it is expected to come up. A revision of the tariff, for example, crowds the hotels and committee-rooms; but there is no lobby for international copyright. One man in Philadelphia, and one woman in Washington, sufficed to kill international copyright the winter before last; but President, Cabinet, Commissioner Wells, the Democrats, the Free-Trade League, the Evening Post, Charles Sumner, and the universe generally, proved unequal to the task of defeating the bill increasing the duty upon copper. Copper had a lobby.

For nearly thirty years after the invention of log-rolling over Mr. Jefferson’s wine (he was a connoisseur in wine, and had imported some kinds from France that were new to his guests on this occasion), the log-rolling lobby generally exerted their powers upon objects which possessed a public character. The lobby, such as we see it now, came in with the protective system in 1816. The book of the tariff, that curiosity of literature, with all its pleasing contents from absinthe to zinc, is a monument to the zeal, skill, audacity, and perseverance of the log-rolling lobby. It used to be said, when the tariff was undergoing its quadrennial revision, that Congress consisted of three houses, — Senate, House, and Tariff Lobby Even if the principle of protection were sound, our tariff is open to the fatal objection that the greater number of its provisions were arranged to suit private interests, not to promote the public good. Calico has had its lobby; and so have copper, iron, salt, wool, and every fabric made by man. It is the public that is not represented in the lobby when the tariff is undergoing manipulation. The public has been represented only by that small number of members of Congress who are not identified with a private interest, and who have made a particular study of the laws of trade. In no legislature on earth have such members ever been a majority ; and we must consequently look to the very lobby that created our tariff system for the influence that will gradually destroy it. Before many years have passed, we shall see the manufacturers of the United States clamoring for free trade ; and then the lobby will change sides. American manufacturers will not always be content with a system that excludes them from the markets of the world, and which is a confession and proclamation of inferiority. It is possible, too, that, before the end of the present century, the art of self-government may have made such progress as to admit of the public being represented in Congress by a powerful and brilliant minority.

Meanwhile, some of the exploits of the tariff lobby are highly amusing ; that is, they are amusing to the boys who throw the stones, and to the spectators that line the shore, but the pelted frogs do not find them laughable. A young firm, which has invested its all in a manufactory, is not amused to discover that the alteration of a line in the tariff list has killed enterprise and made property valueless. In the disinterested spectator, however, some of the incidents related in Mr. Commissioner Wells’s report may excite a smile ; particularly since the Protectionists in the House proclaimed that report unanswerable by attempting to rob its author of his pittance of a salary. The report being thus admitted to be correct by its opponents, its anecdotes have an additional value. "In carrying out the idea of protection,” remarks Mr. Wells, “ Congress has assumed that whatever is for the advantage of a private interest must be for the advantage of the public interest also.” “ The result has been,” he continues, “a tariff based upon small issues, rather than upon any great national principle” ; and this tariff, while it acts as a bad stimulant to some enterprises, is torpidity and death to others.

Amusing case in point. In 1864 American spool-thread makers discovered that some of their English rivals were evading the duty by sending over fine thread in skeins and hanks instead of winding it on spools as usual. A spool-thread lobby appeared in Washington, the result of which was that the tariff was amended with an eye single to the interests of American spool-thread manufacturers. A duty was placed upon unwound fine thread, that was equivalent to prohibition. All was joyous in the circles interested, until, on enforcing the new rates of duty, two disagreeable facts came to light. One was, that very fine unwound thread is an essential article in some branches of manufacture : the other was, that the article could not be procured on the continent of America. Here was a coil. Another lobby went to Washington, on behalf of the manufacturers ot suspenders, gaiters, hustings, coburgs, and other similar products, many of whom absolutely could not continue business if the new duties were collected. One establishment did actually close ; others were suspended ; others ran at a loss for a while ; and much unwound thread, ordered before the spool-thread lobby had performed its work, was sent back to Europe. When the new lobby arrived in Washington, Congress had adjourned, and nothing could save the embarrassed industries but an interpretation of the tariff that would admit unwound thread at lower rates for the purposes to which it is essential. The Secretary of the Treasury took the responsibility of sanctioning a violation of the law. He decided that line thread designed for sewing must pay the new rate, but fine thread to be used in certain manufactures should come in on the old. “ By this decision only,” says Mr. Wells, “several branches of American industry, involving probably more of capital and labor than was represented by the article which it was originally intended to protect, were saved from absolute destruction.” This was extremely comic, except to the few hundred families whose means of living were suddenly threatened or suspended, without warning, and without act of their own.

The performances of the salt lobby are equally striking. One of them would make a subject for a poem. “In the Gulf of California,” Mr. Wells informs us, “there is an island—Carmen—where salt of remarkable purity is deposited by natural agencies in inexhaustible quantities. The situation and condition of this island are such that it would seem as if it were intended to be the natural and cheap source of supply of salt for the whole Pacific coast of our country ; and yet, by the agency of men, and in the name of protection, this free gift of God and this great source of national wealth has been rendered practically of no account, inasmuch as the royalty exacted by the Mexican government, the United States tariff added, and the expenses of collecting and transportation, in the aggregate amount so nearly to the price of salt obtained from other sources in San Francisco, as almost completely to eat up all profits, and thus close in a great degree the only market to which it can be taken. The result of all this is, that capital and labor, in a section of country where capital and labor are of all things most in demand, are withdrawn from other employments and diverted to doing that which Nature herself has already done much more perfectly, namely, making salt from seawater in the bay of San Francisco, at a cost of from seven to ten dollars per ton.” Mr. Bungay, who sang with so much spirit the completion of the Pacific Railroad, could surely do well with this glorious triumph of the salt lobby.

To these two anecdotes borrowed from Mr. Wells I will add one of my own, which is so variously representative, that the relation of it gives the whole history of American manufactures and their lobby, past, present, and future.

Bunting, the material of the starspangled banner, is the subject of the tale. Until within these few years no bunting was made in the United States. The “ flaunting lie " of the years preceding the war, the “ rag ” of secession, and the innumerable flags that streamed over ship, fort, and army, on the part of the United States, were made in England, as were also the flags of our previous wars. But five years ago, some knowing Yankees in Lowell (induced by an act of Congress that promised a contract for a year’s supply of army and navy to whosoever should first produce an article of bunting equal to the best English) mastered the peculiar difficulties attending this branch of manufacture, and won the prize. Before the year ended the war had closed. The demand for bunting was diminished by three fourths, and the English hunting could still be sold in New York cheaper than the American could be produced at Lowell. Need I say that, in these circumstances, a bunting lobby asked an increase of duty upon the foreign fabric ? The duty was promptly fixed at the modest rate of twenty cents per square yard, plus thirty-five per cent of the value ; which was in strict accordance with the system as by lobby established. The result has been, that a hundred and twenty persons have been drawn from other occupations in a State where enterprise languishes and life is embittered by the scarcity of labor, and set at work making bunting. But among these hundred and twenty persons there are several of great ingenuity, who contemplate nothing which they do not desire to improve. Hence, two capital and several minor improvements in the article produced, as well as better and cheaper modes of producing it. These Lowell Yankees print the stars and stripes, instead of sewing them on, and give you a flag without a stitch in it, lighter, more elegant, and more durable than those formerly in use.

Now, with a universal, international system of patent-right and copyright, and a tolerable approximation to freedom of trade, — i. e. with decent “protection ” to the NATURAL RIGHTS OF MAN,

— these Yankees could give the whole world the immediate benefit of their inventions, while reaping a munificent reward for themselves. But under the system of protection to whatever private interest can command a lobby, their operations are limited to the narrow field of one country. The very protection which stimulated the business limits it by making the product too dear to compete with the foreign article in other countries. Give the Lowell men a fair chance, and they will supply half the world with flags ; just as the Steinways, Chickerings, Webers, Knabes, and others would sell American pianos in every capital in Europe, if there were not from two to six duties or taxes on every leading article that enters into the composition of a musical instrument. But the tariff lobby, which got us into this scrape, must get us out of itThe Natural Rights of Man will never send an expensive lobby to Washington, though they may come at last to be powerfully represented within the bar. But the time is probably not very distant when bunting, calico, ships,² wool, cloth, silver, pianos, iron, steel, copper, and coal will roll their several lobbies into one grand overwhelming lobby, and demand that those great interests be allowed as fair a chance in the markets of the world as the same interests in other countries. The system of confining protection to whatever branches of business can afford a lobby or a member, is perhaps nearer its downfall than many suppose.

But this very system indicates the incorruptibleness of Congress, and the impotence of money to carry measures against the current. Mr. Greeley informs us that there is a British lobby in Washington,³ and I learned last winter that there was a French lobby also ; and if the Senate goes on rejecting and neglecting treaties according to its pleasure, we shall doubtless have soon a lobby of all nations, since it is with the Senate that foreign powers must henceforth negotiate. When we consider the immense capital represented by the French and English lobbies, and the enormous advantage which slight changes in the tariff list would give foreign manufactures, and when we also bear in mind that American enterprises are usually in their infancy at the time when they seek protection, we may safely infer that it is not mere length of purse that enables a lobby to carry its point. In truth, there is a general impression in Congress and in the country, that compliance with the American manufacturers’ lobby is “ protection to American industry.” The railroad subsidy system would also have been impossible, if Congress and the country had not been impatient for the construction of the great roads to which it has been applied.

Probably there has never been such a persistent exertion of log-rolling energy as when President Buchanan was trying to force slavery upon Kansas by means of the Lecompton Bill, and a powerful india-rubber interest was lobbying for the extension of the Chaffee patent. These were the two logs. The Lecompton lobby was directed by Cornelius Wendell, who had been clearing a hundred thousand dollars a year from the public printing, whose bank account ran up to “nine hundred and twenty-nine thousand dollars in two years,” and who had behind him the entire administration, with all its resources of men, money, and influence. The head of the Chaffee-patent lobby was that most indomitable of all the india-rubber men, — Horace H. Day, owner of the Chaffee patent, a man capable of spending seventy thousand dollars upon an election. Both of these lobbies spent money, both before and after the junction, as freely as it is ever spent for such purposes. Wendell had his check-book always ready, and Day kept a band of lobbyists in pay for two sessions. Newspapers were bought, subsidized, and established, for the purpose of denouncing members of Congress who would not come in to the support of Lecompton ; and the friends of such members were systematically turned out of custom-houses, postoffices, and navy-yards. Contingent interests in Chaffee were given to correspondents,— one to the correspondent of the leading religious newspaper of the time ; and Mr. Day even took the precaution of assigning a contingent interest to a female “medium,” in exchange for the advice which “she got from the other world to aid the Chaffee patent.” He had a list of Chaffee members in his pocket, which he would show to Wendell when they met ; and Wendell, a much more experienced lobbyist than himself, would warn him that, in Washington, promising support to a measure was a very different thing from voting for it. Among other expedients, the President attempted to bribe the editor of a Philadelphia newspaper, offering him the Liverpool consulship and ten thousand dollars in money.⁴ But all would not suffice. When the bills came to the test of a vote in the House, both failed, a large number of Chaffee members not voting at all, and Lecompton failing in strict accordance with the known political circumstances. Kansas was free, and all the india-rubber men were at liberty to macerate their crude material with the aid of Mr. Chaffee’s masterly invention.

The testimony on this subject fills many hundred pages, but not a word was elicited showing corruption in a member of Congress. Several lobbyists swore that they knew of no member whom they would dare approach with money ; and the general tone of the evidence leads the reader to the same conclusion.

A lobby occasionally attempts to carry a point by surprise. I witnessed a scene of the kind last winter in the House of Representatives, which shows how extremely cautious members should be not to act upon the information given by an interested lobby before they have heard the lobby of the other side. The most honest man in the world will go wrong if he neglects this precaution. Indeed, it may be necessary by and by for Congress to adopt the rule contemplated by the legislature of Massachusetts, compelling lobbyists to present their cases before the proper committee, and making it unlawful for a member to converse privately with an interested person on legislative business.

But to my scene. One afternoon in February last, while the House in Committee of the Whole was working its slow and toilsome way down, item after item, through the Army Appropriation Bill, under the leadership of the alert and vigorous Mr. Blaine, now the Speaker of the House, a clause of the bill was about to pass without debate, when Mr. Fernando Wood, of New York, rose and offered the following curious amendment: “ But no part of the sum [appropriated] shall be paid to Alexander Dunbar for his alleged discovery of the mode of treatment of horses’ feet.” There had been no mention of the said Dunbar in the clause, nor of his mode of treating horses’ feet, nor of any other system of treatment ; and the very name of the man was evidently unknown to the House. Mr. Wood proceeded to explain that the Secretary of War, General Schofield, had made a contract (authorized by act of Congress) with Alexander Dunbar, by which the latter was to receive twenty-five thousand dollars for imparting his system of horse-shoeing and hoof-treatment to the veterinary surgeons and cavalry blacksmiths of the army. “ And I am advised,” continued the member from New York, “ by those who are judges of that subject, that the man is totally ignorant, that he knows nothing about the diseases of horses’ feet, and that he rather perpetrates injury upon the poor animals than produces any benefit to them.”

Fernando Wood, in his air and demeanor, is one of the most dignified and impressive members of the House, He attends carefully to his dress ; and, as to his ‘‘deportment,” Mr. Turveydrop would contemplate him with approval. For such a personage to rise in liis place, and, in a measured, serene manner, discourse thus upon a subject of which no man on the floor knew anything whatever, could not fail to produce some effect. Mr. Blaine could only say, that lie had never heard the name of Alexander Dunbar before ; but that he thought the amendment cast a severe reflection upon the Secretary of War. Mr. Wood insisting, the amendment was finally amended so as to make the exclusion apply to the whole Appropriation Bill, and thus cut off the unknown Dunbar entirely ; and in this form, I believe, it passed the Committee of the Whole, and was prepared for submission to the House ; at least, Mr. Wood agreed to withdraw his amendment in order to amend it in tire way described.

It did so happen that there was a person sitting in a commodious corner of the reporters’ gallery, who, though, a stranger to Mr. Dunbar, and singularly ignorant of horses, yet knew all about the Dunbar system and its discoverer. That person, strange to relate, was myself ; and, if it had not been a little out of order, I should have shouted a few words of explanation over the vast expanse below. Rising superior to this temptation, and thus avoiding the attention of the sergeant-at-arms, I constituted myself a Dunbar lobby, and imparted to as many members as possible some of the facts which I am now about to communicate to the reader. Some years since, the mysterious Alexander Dunbar, an honest, observant farmer and contractor, of Canada, was driving a lame horse on a hilly road. He noticed that the horse was lamest when going down hill, but not lame at all going up hill. Having observed this peculiarity for several miles, he began to speculate upon the cause ; and, by carefully examining the action of he horse’s feet, he discovered it. The blacksmith had pared the hoof on the wrong principle, — cutting it close where it ought to have been left thick, and leaving it unpared where nature constantly produces a redundancy. He tried his hand at remedying the mistake. He cut boldly at the parts that were in excess, and the lameness was cured ! A few judicious cuts with a sharp knife, and a shoe adapted to the natural growth of the hoof, — this is all there is of the Dunbar system, which was elaborated by the mystical Alexander after some years of observation and experiment, suggested by this incident. He found that many cases of lameness of years’ standing could be cured radically and almost instantly by simply paring the hoof aright and altering the shoe.

We have in New York an enthusiast on the structure of the horse, — Mr. Robert Bonner, whose stable contains six of the fastest trotting-horses in the world. He was led to study the anatomy of the horse by endeavoring to get at the reason why some horses can trot in 2: 20 farther than an ordinary nag can in five minutes. He was curious to know just where the trotting talent lies ; and this led to other inquiries. Hearing by chance of Mr. Dunbar’s discovery, he investigated it most thoroughly, and came to the conclusion that the Dunbar system was founded in the eternal nature of things. I suppose that, during the last three years, Mr. Bonner has, with his own hands, pared the hoofs ot fitty horses on the Dunbar plan, and thereby cured a dozen cases of lameness supposed to be incurable. In his great desire to test the discovery, he has travelled a hundred miles sometimes for the sole purpose of having a lame horse shod in the Dunbar style, very frequently paring the hoofs himself. Recently the discoverer has been among us, and his system, after having been adopted in several of the largest stables in the United States, was introduced into the army. But, as usual, his success was damage to other men ; particularly to the proprietors of a patent horse-shoe, which Mr. Dunbar was compelled to say was not made in accordance with the eternal nature of things. Hence, a patent-horse-shoe lobby! Hence, Mr. Fernando Wood’s strange amendment ! Mr. Dunbar’s friends, however, rallied in time to enlighten the House, and no harm was done ; but the occurrence shows how a member of Congress may be misled, unless he makes it a principle and a point of honor never to act upon an ex parte statement.

On this point the late investigating committee of the Massachusetts legislature offers some excellent remarks. It seems that the strikers of the Boston lobby have made such an outcry with regard to the alleged corruption of the legislature during the last year or two, that a committee was appointed to find out how much fire there was beneath all this smoke. They report, as might have been expected, that there is no fire at all, — not a smouldering ember, not a spark. After my investigations at Washington, I am fully prepared to believe this, and I do entirely believe it. They add, that a lobby has no legitimate place except in a committee-room, where both sides can be heard and testimony recorded.⁵ It were much to be desired, that the lobby at Washington were as insignificant and impotent as the lobby at Boston. The hired lobby is. The fellows who lay themselves alongside of green new-comers, and pretend to have “a twist ” on this member, and an unbounded influence over that, and give out that they correspond with seven papers, all daily, are about as influential in one place as they are in the other. This is not the kind of lobby from which danger is to be feared. The lobby that carries its measures has exceedingly little to do with such.

The lobby which is to be feared is that which sends members to Congress, which has millions of acres and dollars at command, and is engaged in schemes dear to the pride and important to the interests of the nation. It is to be regretted that Mr. Jefferson’s advice was not acted upon, to amend the Constitution so as to empower Congress to do everything for the country in the way of internal improvements, which no State or combination of States, or company of individuals, could be reasonably expected to accomplish. The idea of the system established in 1787 was, that the general government should do whatever the interests or the honor of the whole country required to be done, and which the separate States could not do for themselves. The time is not distant, perhaps, when we shall deplore that Congress did not regard a railroad across the continent as a “ post-road,” or as a measure essential to the “ common defence ” of sections so widely separated, and build the road outright with the public money. We might thus have saved a tract of land nearly as large as France, and kept out of the Capitol a lobby that may in time become formidable indeed. The directors of the Pacific Railroad can already, if they choose, enrich a member of Congress, or a hundred members, by merely investing a trifling sum of money for them in the sites of future Chicagos. It is no joke to have half a 'dozen men in the lobby, wielding such an engine and directing such an estate.

The subsidy system originated in the acute mind of the late Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and the first railroad aided by a grant of land was the Illinois Central, in 1850. Mr. Douglas, Senator though he was, was the chief of the Illinois Central lobby, and his management of the bill was the most ingenious, audacious, complicated piece of logrolling that has ever been placed on record. It was his boast, too, that this “pioneer bill,” as he styled it, “went through without a dollar, pure, uncorrupt.” Without a dollar,—yes; pure and uncorrupt, — no.

His first exploit was to get rid of Mr. Holbrooke, who, as far back as 1835, had conceived the project of connecting Chicago and Cairo by a railroad, and to whom had been granted a charter for its construction by the Illinois legislature. On the strength of this charter, and in the fullest confidence that the road would one day be built, Holbrooke had invested his whole fortune in Cairo lots, lands, and projects. Here was Holbrooke’s weakness and Douglas’s opportunity; for these two able and not over-scrupulous men had become Antagonists on this railroad scheme, and it was a question which of the two should, confer the boon on the State. Holbrooke wanted the millions, and Douglas the glory, that would result from success. After years of manoeuvring at home, where Holbrooke had the advantage, the scene of strife was transferred to Washington, where Douglas was then all-powerful. Douglas had already applied for a grant of land in aid of the road; but Holbrooke had procured the passage of an act through the legislature (or, as Douglas charged, had a clause fraudulently inserted in an act), conveying to his company whatever lands Congress might grant. Upon this, the Little Giant introduced a new bill, terminating the road at a different point on the Ohio, and thus reducing Cairo to its original condition of utter worthlessness.

This brought the redoubtable Holbrooke to his knees. “Spare my Cairo ! ” was his imploring cry. “ With pleasure,” replied the Senator, “provided you surrender your charters and leave Illinois Central to me.” Holbrooke surrendered the charters, and Douglas brought in his bill granting alternate sections of land along the line of the projected road.

Such was his preliminary performance. His next step was less difficult, but more striking. The Senators and Members from Alabama and Georgia were opposed to the bill, on the old ground that grants of land for such a purpose — internal improvement of a single State — were unconstitutional. As a Democrat, Mr. Douglas should have respected, should have shared, this scruple. Perhaps he did, but he overcame it; and he addressed himself to the task of overcoming theirs in a manner that was business-like at least. While visiting his children’s plantation in Mississippi, he found it convenient to go to Mobile, where he at once inquired the way to the office of the Mobile Railroad, recently suspended for want of money. He was lucky enough to catch the president and directors at the office, just as they had concluded the business which had called them together. The champion of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democracy did not stop to argue the constitutional question with these gentlemen, but proposed to them a game of log-rolling. He offered to tack to his bill a clause giving their suspended road a grant of lands, provided the Senators and Representatives of Alabama and Mississippi would vote for the bill. The president and directors, rejoicing in this unlooked-for prospect of relief, instantly gave their assent, disposing of the votes of their absent Senators and Members as though they owned them. But, no, said the cool-headed Senator from Illinois; your Senators and Members have already voted against my bill, and it is necessary for your legislatures to instruct them to vote for it. This presented no difficulty to that knot of railroad directors, and the compact was concluded on the spot; one director saying, that if Senator Foote did not vote for the grant he should never be re-elected to the Senate. Cautioning them all to keep secret his connection with the affair, Douglas took his leave, and went straight to Washington, " being afraid to be seen in those parts.”

In due time the legislative instructions reached Washington, as per agreement. Mr. Douglas then had occasion to exert his histrionic talents. Senator King of Alabama, and Davis of Mississippi, who had been most decided in their opposition to the bill, “ cursed their legislatures,” and could scarcely believe their eyes. In their perplexity, they consulted Douglas, and asked his aid in drawing the clause which was to include the Mobile Road in the grant. With all the dignity of a man who felt himself aggrieved, Mr. Douglas declined their offered support, saying that he felt sure of being able to carry his bill without their aid ; but feigned to be softened at length, and agreed, as a favor to them, to admit the clause which they desired. The solemn farce was maintained to the end. The Southern Senators, as Douglas anticipated, were in no haste to comply with disagreeable Instructions, and, consequently, when he sent them word one day that he was about to call up his Illinois Central Bill, they came hurrying to the chamber, with no amendment ready, and begged him to draw one for them. He had had an amendment carefully drawn by one of the best lawyers in Congress, which he handed to Mr. King of Alabama, and immediately moved to proceed with the bill. Mr. King then rose, in his usual dignified manner, and asked the Senator from Illinois to accept an amendment. The Senator from Illinois was obliging enough to do so. The Senators from Alabama and Mississippi all voted for the bill, and it passed the Senate, with the additional clause.

This was an essential point gained ; but the decisive battle was to be fought in the Blouse of Representatives. And here Mr. Douglas performed feats of log-rolling which, I think, have never been equalled in any legislative body. The log-rolling art, begun in 1790 by Hamilton and Jefferson, made marvellous progress in the short space of sixty years.

When the bill stood at the head of the Speaker’s list, and Douglas could count in the House a majority of fifteen pledged ” to support it, Mr. Harris of Illinois moved to proceed with the business on the Speaker’s table. This called up the bill, and roused the dormant opposition. By the adroit management of that opposition, a test motion was precipitated upon the House, which left the bill in a minority of one ; and this, notwithstanding weeks of previous log-rolling, and the fifteen pledged majority. ”We had gained votes,” says Mr. Douglas, “ by lending our support to many local measures.” But, at the important moment, you see, some of the “ pledged ” votes were not forthcoming, which is often the case in Washington. Let Mr. Douglas relate what followed : —

“ I was standing in the lobby, paying eager attention, and would have given the world to be at Harris’s side, but was too far off to get there in time; and it was all in an instant, and the next moment a motion would have been made, which would have brought on a decided vote, and have defeated the bill. Harris, quick as thought, pale and white as a sheet, jumped to his feet, and moved that the House go into Committee of the Whole on the slavery question. There were fifty members ready with speeches on this subject, and the motion was carried. Harris came to me in the lobby, and asked me if he had made the right motion. I said, ‘Yes,’ and asked him if he knew what was the effect of his motion. He replied it placed the bill at the foot of the calendar. I asked him how long it would be before it came up again. He said, ‘ It would not come up this session ; it was impossible ; there were ninety-seven bills ahead of it.’”⁶

But the Little Giant would not give it up. For many days and “nights” he racked his brain for an expedient. It occurred to his mathematical mind, at last, that the same tactics applied to the ninety-seven bills would place them also, one after the other, at the bottom of the calendar, and his own bill, finally, at the top. The plan was adopted. Ninety-seven times Air. Harris, or else some member not supposed to have any particular interest in the Illinois Bill, moved to clear the Speaker’s table ; ninety-seven times a certain other member moved to go into Committee of the Whole on the slavery question ; ninety-seven times this always welcome motion was carried. Sometimes these tactics would be employed twice in the same day, and send two bills tumbling to the bottom of the ladder. And the Illinois Bill constantly gained friends by the process ; for was not Harris, who had it in charge, continually moving to call up bills in alliance with it ? The odium all fell upon the member who continually frustrated Harris’s benevolent intentions. “ All praised us,” says Mr. Douglas ; “ said we were acting nobly in supporting them. We replied, ‘Yes, having defeated our bill, we thought we would be generous, and assist you.’ All cursed Mr.——. Some asked me if I had not influence enough to prevent his motion. I replied he was an ardent antagonist, and that I had nothing to do with him, to the truth of which they assented.” That member was, indeed, a political opponent of Mr. Douglas, but he was a personal friend, and was acting in this matter in pursuance of an express agreement with the Senator from Illinois. The Illinois Bill gradually worked its way to the top of the list once more, when it was passed by a majority of three. It cost Douglas two years of hard work, in and out of Congress, to accomplish this result.

I have dwelt upon this masterpiece, because it includes almost every known device and trick of the log-rolling art. The ease with which the legislatures of Illinois, Alabama, and Mississippi were handled by a few railroad chiefs ; the manner in which a lobbyist with a mathematical head converted the just rules of the House of Representatives into an engine of injustice ; the unblushing audacity with which an honorable Senator, and candidate for the Presidency, could first lie, and then boast that he had lied ; — these are among the points that should excite reflection. But neither those three legislatures nor Congress could have been wielded in this manner by one man, if there had not been in those bodies, and in many of the people whom they represented, an impatient desire to have the works executed in aid of which a principality was granted. The three interested States were, of course, well pleased to have railroads completed which for fifteen years they had in vain been trying to execute for themselves ; and the rest of the country was absorbed in the great public questions of the time. This feat was performed in the very heat and tempest of the slavery debates of 1850.

Presidents and directors are the lords of the world at present. There have always been rich men ; but in former times great capital was dead or torpid, — invested in vast landed estates,— and the revenue spent in luxury and ostentation. But the steamengine has generated a new kind of capitalists, — men of brain, ambition, and industry, wielding millions of active capital, and controlling thousands of human beings, — men capable of everything except the tranquil enjoyment of life, and who rest only when they lie down to rest forever. These are the children of the steam-engine, which compels everything to be done on the great scale, — manufacturing, travelling, and finally agriculture, — and has called into being a class of men capable of directing immense enterprises and of wielding enormous sums. In England these men generally get into the small circle of the ruling class, marry into ruling families, get themselves elected to Parliament, govern the British empire, as we may say, legitimately ; and hence, their power is not absolute, butlimited. In the United States they have usually found it more convenient to govern in the lobby, and their power threatens to become unlimited, through their easy control of law-making bodies. If, just now, they are turning their thoughts toward getting within the bar, and some have found their way thither, it is that they may operate the more effectually as log-rolling lobbyists.

It is startling to hear these people talk of legislatures, and their complete subserviency. My eye was caught the other day by this passage in an affidavit of Mr. Daniel Drew of New York ; “ We” (directors of the Erie Railroad) “ went over to New Jersey ; we stayed over there some weeks ; we got a law passed by the New Jersey Legislature to enable us to transact the business of the company over there, so that we might not be plagued by the courts of New York, ” alias Fisk, Jr. The off-hand, matter-of-course manner in which the fact is mentioned would be remarkable, if we were not so familiar with the state of things at Trenton. Probably it cost Mr. Drew little more than the writing of a letter, to get the law passed. Usually, however, legislatures are managed by log-rolling, or, as Mr. Washburne of Illinois styles it, ring legislation, — “ combinations of different and distinct interests for the purpose of forcing legislation upon subjects grouped together, when not one of them could stand separately,” — a system, he observes, which is “becoming the curse of the country.”⁷

Mr. Washburne declined to state whether anything of this kind is done in Congress, because it would not have been “in order.” But there is another gentleman in the House of Representatives, of similar name, General C. C. Washburn of Wisconsin, who, in the most nonchalant way, in the course of the same debate, let the cat out of the bag. “ Every intelligent member of Congress knows,” said he, “that any company representing a capital of one hundred millions of dollars can defeat any legislation that ever may be sought here in the interest of the public.” Many years had passed since a sentence had so impressed and puzzled me as this ; and, after brooding over it for eleven months, I went to Washington purposely to see what it meant. There is something in the phraseology of it which causes it to lay violent hold of the mind. “ Every intelligent member ! ” Greenhorns may think that Congress is the supreme power in this land ; but intelligent members know that the lobby can defeat any legislation that can ever be sought in Washington, in the interest of the public. It is a truly tremendous statement, and, for one, I think it is much too sweeping. It may, at length, become true ; but, up to this time, potent as the lobby is, and skilled as it is in log-rolling, it has won signal triumphs in Washington only when it has been supported by a strong and wide-spread feeling out of doors. The Pacific Railroad, for example, — was ever a public work so vehemently desired as that ? Congress made a hard bargain for the country in subsidizing the road so lavishly; but, at the time the bargain was made, it did not seem so unreasonable, and the public was in a mood to submit to any conditions, provided the road were hurried forward.

The millionaires in the lobby, however, are most powerful in Washington, and their power seems likely to increase with their rapidly augmenting wealth.

Think of the mere amount of money which a man, or a small number of men, can now control. “I can check for fifteen millions,” is the boast of a person who but yesterday drove a pedler’s wagon. Two or three men, styled, The Erie Railway Company, receive fifteen millions of dollars a year from that road, employ twelve thousand men, lease hundreds of miles of other and connecting railroads, own twenty steamboats on the Great Lakes, control lines of steamboats on Long Island Sound, expend twenty-five millions a year, run a New York court, keep a judge, and can have what they wish at Albany, even to being endowed with absolute power over all this property for five years. One gentleman, past the time of life when our forefathers used to retire from business, deliberately selected as the amusement of his old age (he really regards it in that light) the getting control of all the railroads connecting New York with the Western country. He began the pastime by buying one road a hundred and sixty miles long outright, with his own money ; for this gentleman can check for much more than fifteen millions. Old as he is, he may live long enough to accomplish his purpose ; and he certainly would, if he were fifty years of age instead of seventy - five. Another able, untiring man has a drygoods store in New York which contains precisely the space of two hundred dry-goods stores of average size, and does about the amount of business that two hundred average stores would do, and does it at less than half the average expense. Two great houses, the Capulets and Montagues of Rhode Island, are said (falsely, no doubt, but with some show of truth) to divide that pleasant, busy, thriving little State between them ; and New Jersey does really appear to have abdicated her political being in favor of Camden and Amboy.

We must bear in mind also that this massing tendency is a law of nature, which the steam-engine has only stimulated and aggravated. In every pond the strong-coarse devour the weakfine. The savage pickerel grows great by gobbling up myriads of gentle perch and tender trout. In every age the same problem presents itselt in a changed form, How the weak-fine are to keep the strong-coarse a little within bounds. In one age the pickerel is the feudal system ; again, it is a priestly hierarchy ; or it is both these in alliance. At another time it is Philip II., or Louis XIV., or Napoleon Bonaparte. In England, at present, it is what that intelligent English newspaper, the Pall Mall Gazette, calls the “ Inevitable Landlord.” This paper, a few weeks ago, had a noticeable article upon the all-devouring British pickerel, in the course of which it said : Almost every economical improvement which can be suggested, every saving in cost of production, every relief from inconvenient incumbrances, every measure designed for the improvement of the condition of the toiling classes of society, ends by putting more money into the pockets of that order which certainly does not suffer from the lack of it. Let science apply her novel resources to the cultivation of the land, and up goes the rent. Let sanitary improvements in towns be carried out at great cost to the public in general, the final benefit (in a pecuniary sense) is reaped by the house-owner. Let railways and telegraphs bring the most distant parts of the productive area of our soil into immediate competition with those previously more available, and the territorial proprietors of the regions thus rendered more accessible, after a short time, make their bargains with the tenant according to the raised value of the land.”

This is merely the present English form of the universal difficulty, which form we have not yet reached, and may never reach. We have to contemplate the time, not distant, when all our towns will be Lowells, all industry a mill, all land model farms ploughed by steam, and all the resources of the country wielded by presidents and boards. With us it is the inevitable DIRECTOR who looms up, formidable and menacing.

It is to be observed, also, of these check - drawing magnates, that they have learned, of late years, how much better it pays to unite, and prey upon the public, than it does to fight, and prey upon one another. They will fight long enough to ascertain whether one can devour another; but when they have discovered that this cannot be conveniently done, then they are apt to unite, and rush hungry upon mankind. I have quoted a few words, above, from an affidavit of Mr. Daniel Drew, founder of a theological seminary. The same affidavit concludes with the following passage: “ Gould and Fisk have recently been engaged in locking up money ; they told me so ; they wanted me to join them in locking up money, and I did to the extent of one million dollars, and refused to lock up any more ; I had originally agreed to lock up four million dollars, but when money became very tight I deemed it prudent to decline to go any farther, and unlocked my million. The object of locking up is to make money scarce. They had money enough of the Erie Railway Company to lock up to make money scarce and affect the stock market, — to make stocks fall, because people could n’t get the money to carry them ; they sent, I have understood, three millions to Canada, to a bank there.”

The reader will never know what he lost by skipping those columns upon columns of affidavits in small type, which darkened the New York newspapers in the early part of the present year, — affidavits shot at one another by directors contending for the control of the Erie Railway. The publishers of the newspapers were right in refusing to insert the affidavits, except as advertisements at so much a line, because no one could rationally be expected to read them. But those who did read them were amused and edified. An attentive reader could see both games played, that of combining to plunder, and that of fighting to devour. The victors succeeded, at length, in getting the unhappy Founder of a Theological Seminary in a position that would have excited pity in any but a director’s breast. He came to one of them on a Sunday morning, and simply begged for mercy, but begged in vain. He would not be denied. He pleaded till one o’clock on Monday morning, without producing any effect upon his fellow pickerel, who had him in that, terrible Erie corner. Since the world was created, never before did a founder of a theological seminary pass such a Sunday.

Many recent instances in which corporations have first contended for each other’s destruction, and then united for the purpose of having the public at their mercy, are familiar to us all, and need not be mentioned. Corporations omnipotent within their range result from these unions ; corporations which pay their legal advisers much more money per annum for an occasional hour a day than the public pays its highest servants for exhausting toil the year round. These corporations, huge and powerful as they now are, are capable of uniting again in the lobby at Washington for purposes common to several of them ; and we have the opinion of a veteran member of Congress, that they will never exert themselves in that lobby without accomplishing their object

When this state of things is contemplated, people sometimes reassure themselves by saying that the press is left, to represent, and contend for, the public. But is it ? Who is the controlling man of most of our great newspapers, — the editor, or the stockholder ? If any one is in doubt on this point, he has only to ask the co-operation of some of the leading newspapers in urging a reform, which will involve the risk of pecuniary loss. In many cases, he will find that it is the stockholding mind which decides questions of that nature. The editor would attack a flagrant abomination ; but the man controlling a majority of the stock calls his attention to the fact that the flagrant abomination advertises two or three columns a day, and the flagrant abomination is either not attacked at all, or it is flattered by the kind of attack that advertises it most effectively. The editor is generally man enough to look to the future, and comprehend the policy of forming journalists to fill the places by and by of the present leaders of the press. He would stimulate and reward young ambition, —exulting to compensate able and valiant service liberally ; but the stockholder thinks naturally of his next dividend, and puts the office upon an allowance. Flourishing as the press is, as a mere business, it is for the moment in a condition of arrested development. The young journalist climbs to a certain height ; but when he has done his apprenticeship, and has fitted himself for something of command, he finds that he has attained all that the press now has to bestow upon mere talent and skill. It is only money that can advance him another step. The stockholder blocks the way. The editor is dethroned. The stockholder reigns.

This is no one’s fault. It is, after all. only a stage in the march of the press, where, for a brief period, it halts, to perfect new arrangements. Like every other institution and interest of civilized man, the press has to adjust itself to the steam-engine, which first enabled, and now compels, it to be immense, and thus necessitates the stockholder. When the mere presses, that a daily newspaper in a large city must have, cost a hundred thousand dollars, and the telegrams average five hundred dollars a day, there must be more money invested in a daily paper than an intellectualized man ever possesses except by an accident. The irruption of the moneyed stockholder into the press presents peculiar inconveniences only because newspapers are, in some degree, an intellectual product, — not a mere commodity or manufacture, like screws or flour. An editor is naturally the servant of the public, not the servant of a few men who have raised money enough to buy shares in a newspaper.

The stockholder cannot be expected at once to perceive these truths, and it is his vocation and duty to look to the dividends, lie seems, at present, rather disposed to regard the writers for the press very much as managers of theatres used to regard dramatists, — such managers as the one who gave Douglas Jerrold five pounds a week, and made twenty thousand pounds by one of his plays. These men arrested the development of the English stage for sixty years, as the stockholder now arrests the development of the daily press. But, doubtless, a way will be devised by which journalists, pure and simple, without submitting to the nuisance of making money, will be restored to a just share of the power, honor, and safety now enjoyed and abused by the stockholder. Either this will be, or the press will decline and degenerate.

Congress and journalism, then, are in the same boat. Directors and stockholders threaten the independence of both. In the lobby they employ their talents in log-rolling; and when they want important service from the press, they can buy shares. Any newspaper in the country, except perhaps two, could be bought outright for two millions of dollars ; and what are two millions to men who control fifteen hundred miles of railroad and have a “ greenback mill” in their power, to shoot into Wall Street new stock by the wagon-load ? Congress is not corrupt; the press is not corrupt. Both are threatened with paralysis; but neither will be paralyzed. Every age has its difficulty. This is ours, and we shall overcome it.