Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1896 — WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT

Hercules' Tusks Were Simple Compared with Hie. The Job of a Washington correspou dent la far from being a bed of roses, In these days when Interviewing is elevated to the dignity of a fine art. In the sphere where members of Congress and high government officials are beset with the cares of their positions and by visiting constituents and office seekers, who swarm about them like bees in clover time, the interviewer must have rare tact and be a keen reader of human nature to accomplish his purpose, conquer his man and walk away victorious with the information he has gathered for the journal in whose making he must bear an important part or surrender his place to more skillful keeping. There are now in Washington about 150 newspaper correspondents who have the entree to the press galleries of House and Senate. There are dozens of others who are excluded on account of lack of room, the rules granting privileges only to those engaged by dally papers, who send all, or nearly all, of their matter by telegraph. The House gallery lias been considerably enlarged during the last few years, but it is yet too email for the crowd of writers who swarm into It when anything important or exciting is in progress. The Senate gallery is too smaa by half, but at both there are spacious ante-rooms for smoking, gossiping and swapping lies. The mere search for news is arduous work and requires persistence and great discrimination. Add to this the ever-growing determination of the great journals of the country to extract day by day the opinions of all great or conspicuous men upon the most delicate and difficult of public questions, and one may easily understand how simple were the tasks which Jove gave to Hercules compared to those of Washington correspondents of journals which apparently will not be limited In their enterprise by the confines of this world or the next.