High School on the Hill

The oratorical proceedings in the House Ways & Means Committee Room in the New House Office Building sounded something like a high-school commencement. In itself, that was by no means unusual, but this time there really was a high-school commencement going on inside. One night last week the senior class (13 boys) of the Capitol Page School, one of the most uncommon academies in existence, got its diplomas almost like any other senior class, with the playing of Pomp and Circumstance, a welcome by Principal Orson W. Trueworthy, an address by John W. Snyder, Secretary of the Treasury, and a misspelling ("salutorian") in the program.

Cloakroom Tyrant. At that point, the resemblance to other schools stopped. The Capitol Page School, an offshoot of the District of Columbia school system, is attended by the House's 49 page boys, the Senate's 21, the Supreme Court's four, and a few more Capitol-employed boys. School starts at 6:30 a.m. every weekday, lets out at 9:39 a.m.; work begins at 9:49 a.m., ends usually between 5 and 6 p.m. Homework is light. The student-pages are paid $246.95 a month; tuition is free.

The Page School provides better instructions than pages ever got in the past.

Congress made no educational provision at all for nine-year-old Grafton Dulany Hanson, the first Capitol page, who was appointed during Jackson's Administration by both Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. After the Civil War, a bewhiskered, one-armed tyrant, remembered only as "Captain White," was enthroned over the pages. Captain White had a singular outlook on education: martial spirit, he felt, was everything. So he marched the pages around & around the House cloakrooms in close-order drill until they were dead tired and fighting mad.* After Captain White's time, a loose system of private tutoring was set up.

Remarkable Reform. By 1947, some of the boys were running wild enough--gambling and crapshooting in dark corners of the Capitol--to make Congress yank the rein. The old school was replaced by the present District branch; an age limit of 14 to 18 was set; closer control was imposed on after-hours activities. At the same time, tuition was dropped, salaries boosted, and uniforms of all pages made uniform, except for the knee-breeches which the Supreme Court still requires.

Congress has not complained since. The Senators' traditional snuffboxes and sand-shakers are filled without fail. Bills and documents are promptly distributed, errands are run lickety-split. (New pages are still sent on a fool's errand to find a "bill-stretcher.")

On such jobs, among the politicians and jurists, the pages pick up, for better or worse, the major part of their education; the school is still a minor influence. As Valedictorian Randall V. Oakes Jr., 18, understated after graduation last week: "You get to see a lot in the House."

*One ex-page, Henry A. Burgevine, had more martial spirit than was good for him. In China in the days of the great Taiping rebellion, Adventurer Burgevine entered the Emperor's service. In 1860 he became commander of the foreign mercenaries, but he was ousted and fled to the rebels, who gave him a high command. Captured later by government forces, he was drowned before he could be brought to trial. Some said his boat capsized; some said he was plumped into a burlap bag and dumped into the sea.

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