AMERICAN FEMALE LOBBYISTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1898, 19 June 1890, Page 35

AMERICAN FEMALE LOBBYISTS.

The female lobby of the Capitol has all ways been exaggerated. Some lobbying is done here by women, but as for professional female lobbyists they are scarcer than hen teeth. You meet numerous women with Claims in the Capitol corridors, and there are a couple of old ladies who have been here for a generation awaiting the settlement of a cotton claim. The claim is probably a just one, but Congress does not get at it, and they will be in their graves before it is settled. Their faces were fresh when they came here. They are wrinkled now, and (here are crows' feet at their eyes. They

bring their knitting with them, and sit together in the galleries waiting and watching, and watching and waiting, session in and session out.

Dr Mary Walker has business of one kind or another with congressmen every year. She is a weazened, dried up little woman of perhaps 40 years of age, and she always wears the newest of gentlemen's clothes, cut to fit and of the latest style. She has a black silk hat on her head and her straight, black, Indian-like hair, well oiled, hangs down from the brim of this hat. I have seen her talking to Judge Holman, leaning upsn a dainty black cane while she poured her tale of woe into his grandfatherly ears.

A new lobbyist this session is a red- faced woman, with blue eyes and a rakish straw hat. She seems to be crazy, and imagines that it is her mission to catch Silcott. She addresses congressmen wherever she meets them, and they usually treat her well. A number of the women lobbyists are working for their own cases. Not a few widows in black are anxious to see pension bills put through.

Many of these women are well educated. They are ladies of refinement, are the wives of officers, and their claims are just. The Senate reception room always has a number of ladies on its comfortable sofas, and not infrequently a half dozen senators are seated beside the fair ones, discussing their cases. This room is one of the beautiful rooms of the Capitol, and the claimants do considerable work in it. Most of the senators are very kind to women, and the only thing that angers them is the professional book agent, who calls them out with an engraved card and then asks them to buy a lOdol volume of " Pictures from the Holy Land."

FEMALE OBANKB.

The Capitol building is the resort of all the female cranks of the country, and you may find one or more here any day, of all classes, from Charlotte Smith, who represents the Working Women's League, down to the old crazy woman, who is known aa the Witch of Bndor.

Charlotte Smith is a specialist rather than a crank. She ranks in the same class with Susan B. Anthony, and is doing what she can to benefit.women. She wants the wages of the women of the various departments raised, and she pushes all bills in favour of women's work.

The Witch of Endor is a crazy woman 6ft tall and about 18in across the shoulders. She makes me think of the Woman in White of Wilkie Collins, and she is frightfully ugly. She wears a huge poke bonnet covered with ribbons, the colours of which swear at each other, and her long drawn out figure is half concealed by a long grey dress which falls straight from the shoulders to her feet like a Mother-Hubbard without its fulness. She sometimes wears a green silk shawl, and out of her poke bonnet, fringed with frowsy grey hair, is a skull-like face covered with sallow skin. Her eyes are grey and the lids are as red as if she had been crying since the day she was born. She wears heavy Arctic overshoes and she glides along so quietly that you are always scared when you see her and imagine that one of the Capitol ghosts is after you. She is harmless, however, and no one pays any attention to her. THE BUSINESS WOMEN OF THE CAPITOL.

There are a number of women who make their living in the Capitol building. There is a pretty telephone girl connected with the Senate who will " hello " for yon to -any part of Washington, and who has to do this service for many a senator. There is a middle-aged typewriter just off the corridor of the House, whose machine clicks in response to the dictation of many a congressman. There are lunch stands in many parts i of the corridors, presided over by women, and the little old apple woman, who sits in the window recess near the main door of the House, has many customers.

She is a very poor woman, and her face bears the lines of hardship. Promptly at the opening of the House every day she squats down here [on the floor with her apples, her basket beside her, and peddles them out at the rate of three for five cents to all comers. Many of the leading congressmen are great apple eaters. t The lunch stand at the side of Statuary Hall is largely patronised by the newspaper correspondents, and you may see congressman and journalist buying of this old lady here. Her stock consists of sandwiches and pie, and she furnishes the best of milk to wash down the solids.

Farther on is Aunt Clara, the noted Frenchwoman of the Capitol. She has been here for 40 years, and has not grown a day older in the last two decades. She does the biggest business of any woman in the Capitol, and she sells photographs of public men, souvenirs made of the pulp of mashed greenbacks, guide books, and relics. She is as spry as a cricket, notwithstanding that she must be in her seventies. Her hair is still brown, and her cheeks are as rosy as those of the Capitol brides who buy of her. She knows all the statesmen of the Capitol well. She has been here longer than any of them, and the only person in the Capitol who can compare with her in term of service is old Messenger Bassett, who began as a page in the Senate, and who is here yet.

Aunt Clara knew Clay and Webster, and she has talked with John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis. She was a strong Union woman, and during the war she used to go over to the Senate and wave a silk flag whenever a Union speech was made, ft was Charles Sumner who helped her hold her place in this corridor, and she will continue to stay here as long as she lives. She has made money out of her sales, and it is said that she has sent her son through Yale College, and given her daughter a European education. Aunt Clara knew General Grant, and Grant wrote her an autograph from Mount M'Gregor in response to one she sent asking for his autograph, and saying she hoped he would recover. WOMEN CORRESPONDENTS IN THE CAPITOL.

The ladies who correspond here now devote themselves olmost entirely to society, and the bulk of their work is made up of the description of dresses and of prospective engagements and weddings. Mary Clemmer Ames used to write a great many criticisms of public men and measures, and she had a high rank as a bt*rat e w. At present there is scarcely a woman who does this class of work, and it seems to me the Capitol offers a field for some bright female pen. Mary Clemmer got 8000dol a year from the lode*

pendent for writing a letter a week, and she aslo wrote editorials for the Brooklyn Kagle. She must have made in the neighbourhood of 10,000dol, a year, and she kept up her work until the time of her death som6 years ago. — American paper.