Influence Peddling Turns Respectable

THE LOBBYIST

DURING the congressional debate over Federal regulation of natural-gas producers (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), Michigan's Republican Senator Charles Potter, who favors regulation, tore into the gas lobby for trying "to put pressure on me." But Senator Potter also had a powerful lobby working for his side: representatives of scores of Eastern utilities and big unions, plus a small-producers'-and-consumers' committee headed by Indianapolis' former Mayor Alex M. Clark.

Natural gas is but one of many targets this year for Washington's corps of 1,000 professional lobbyists, most of whom represent business organizations. Whether lobbying helps or hinders the legislative process is a century-old, unsettled question. But there is no doubt that the practice is more widespread than ever. In fact, almost every U.S. citizen is in some way represented or affected by a lobby. The National Association of Letter Carriers is working for higher wages; the Clothespin Manufacturers of America is trying to limit imports of foreign clothespins; the Sioux Indian Tribal Council is demanding compensation for lost agricultural and game land; the American Farm Bureau Federation is pressing the Senate Agriculture Committee to broaden Agriculture Secretary Benson's soil-bank plan. As she has for some 50 years, Miss Alice ("The Little Quakeress") Paul is buttonholing Congressmen in her pursuit of equal rights for women.

"A lobbyist," Will Rogers once quipped, "is a person that is supposed to help a politician to make up his mind, not only help him but pay him." As early as 1852 the House of Representatives chased lobbyists from its floor, and in 1875 Congress pushed through a rule requiring their registration. But at the next session the lobbyists lobbied the rule out of existence, and lobbying became not only more flagrant but more fragrant. During Woodrow Wilson's Administration, Senate investigators discovered that one of their own teen-age pages was being paid to tip off the National Association of Manufacturers' lobbyist about confidential cloakroom talks.

But not until 1946 did Congress again require every lobbyist (i.e., any individual who accepts money to influence congressional legislation) to register and report his expenses. All told, last year registered lobbyists spent upwards of $4,000,000, with the Transportation Association of America running up the biggest bill ($227,000) for 1955's first six months. Cuba's sugar industry has the biggest staff--23 registered lobbyists.

The Thomas Nast caricature of the bediamonded, potbellied lobbyist has faded beyond recognition. Says American Hotel Association Lobbyist Donald Montgomery: "Some businessmen are still stupid enough to want a crook for a lobbyist, a guy who can make the quick fix. But those characters are out of date." In to replace him has come a well-trained, accommodating technical expert whose facts--tailored, of course, to fit his own cause--are presented not in a backroom, but at a formal hearing. One of the lobbyist's biggest jobs is to gauge political winds and determine what he can get. Said one lobbyist: "I spend as much time educating my own people on what they can and should get as I do educating people on the Hill."

Congressmen often depended on lobbyists for much of their information about pending bills; thus the lobbyist could fog the figures to suit his ends. But Congress has boosted its budget for research and analysis from $500,000 to $8,000,000 over the last 15 years, now can obtain the pros and cons about pending bills from non-partisan congressional experts.

The biggest danger from lobbyists is that they can often stir up an outcry against legislation that is way out of proportion to the voters they represent. One of the most potent lobbyists for high tariffs is Oscar Strackbein. To fight free trade, he can bombard Congressmen with letters and petitions from 70 high-sounding organizations--all headquartered in Strackbein's own small office in Washington.

Back in the '305, lobbyists often tried to drum up a "grassroots" demand on Congress by sending thousands of telegrams, often identical, signed with names copied from phone books. Congressmen are no longer impressed by such blizzards of mail. But the main goal of some of the most successful lobbyists still is to generate a genuine grass-roots demand. The Farm Bureau Federation, for example, not only works hard on Congressmen in Washington, but it also encourages its state organizations to keep close tabs on members, educate them on new legislation, persuade them to write their Congressmen. As the farm and other lobbies well know, a Congressman can resist a professional lobbyist in Washington. But he cannot ignore the authentic voice from the grass roots, even if the cry is led by a lobbyist.

* There was a time when understaffed

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