AMERICAN "LOBBYING."

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 6 September 1913, Page 12

AMERICAN "LOBBYING."

Thre is something humorous (soys tlje Outlook) in the solemn appearance ot all the United States Senators, one atter the other, before a committee investigating lobbying. Most of them embraced the opportunity to show that they had no private .interests which would tpnd to make them favor special tariff privileges, and to deprecate the idea that nowadays there in any such wing ias lobb?ing in an improper" sense. .Whether lobbying can be perfectly proper and still be "numerous, industrious, and insidious," as President alleged, depends somewhat on the point of view. Senator Penrose doclnred that the practice of lobbying in the old sense is practically decadent, and that the number of lobbyists now not half what it was when the Payne Bill was before Congress. Senntor Kpnyon. on the other hand, said that "President Wilson was dead right in the charges he had made that a powerful lobby was at work at Washington to hinder or prevent the rasS^se of the Democratic Tariff Bill." The modern lobbyist, said Senator Kenron, uses flattery, social advancement, entertainment, and snoh lures more than mWy. Senator Pittman also endorsed President Wilson's .Tssertion, and asserted that there was intimidation as well as argument and flattery. Senator Smoot declared that false and misleading literature nbout labor conditions on beet sugar farms was by +?>eir industrial onnonejits, Others criticised , the methods of the woolgrowers' representatives as unfair.