Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1888 — HOW CONGRESSMEN LIVE. [ARTICLE]

HOW CONGRESSMEN LIVE.

Ex-Governor Long Gives Some Interesting Facts About Their Hopae Surround i ngs. When John D. Long, of Massachusetts, leaves the House of Representatives, as he proposes to do at the en,d of his present term, his State and the country gerigenerally will lose the services of a bright statesman. Some time ago he advised his friends that he would not be a candidate for re-election, and it has generally been understood that Mr. Long, not being ripfi, Was desirous to return to the practice of his profession as a lawyer, so as to provide more adequately for himself and family. Writing to a newspaper friend who had commented on his retirement, he gives some interesting statements as to the life and expenses of many of his colleagues in Washington. He says: In reference to my withdrawal from the House of Representatives, I beg you not to think it is a matter merely of a few dollars more or less of salary. My habits are simple, and salary is not a controlling consideration with me, as it ought not to be to any public official. His public duty turns on far higher considerations. And what you say of his obligation to them, and of the grave public responsibilities that rest on him, is true and you can not say it too often or too forcibly.

I do not write, however,with reference to my retirement, reserving what I have to say about that until I write a general letter to the district a little later. I write to correct what I infer from your editorials to be a mistaken notion with regard to the manner in which Congressmen generally live in Washington. So far from being to them a “Babylon” full of “wasteful wantons” and “lavish luxuries,” it is vefy much what Abingdon or Hingham is to your neighbors or mine. There are a few persons of great riches who now and then give entertainments and live in an extravagant and profuse way, as some rich people do in every other community. But the great bulk of representatives, including noticeably nearly all the men of controlling influence, are men of limited means, who live in a modest and simple manner.

On the whole, I should say that the instance of Henry Wilson, which you cite, is a type of the present majority of members. Our Massachusetts Senators, Dawes and Hoar, live quite as simply, one in a little tenement no better than our ordinary New England parsonage, and the other in a boarding-house, which you will not think extravagant when I tell ycm that, with the exception of myself, the rest of the boarders are Government employes, whose average salaries range from perhaps $2,000 rapidly downward. Walking out with Mrs. Long at sundown last evening we passed a modest doorstep on which, with his young children playing about him, sat a member, who pointed to a plain suite of rooms as his lodging; whose dress and manner of living are as simple and unostentatious as those of a Plymouth county farmer, and vet he is a millionaire, the richest man, I think, in the House, a Western lumberman, wise and hard-handed, and not ashamed, but proud of the goad stick which he wielded in his youth, and with which he pricked his way to fortune. Among the leaders, Reed lives in the fifth story of a small hotel, Randall in a house that would perhaps yield a rent of S3OO or S4OO, McKinley in two or three chambers, Mills in a quiet boarding house, and so on through the list. The House is full of poor men who make no show, who are just such plain, well behaved, temperate, churchgoing people as you and I meet at home, who go afoot and drive no fine teams, who ape no fashions, some of whom go to the few public receptions that occur in the winter, but few of whom are able or eare to hold receptions or give entertainments themselves.

Fine raiment is so rare among them that an old suit which I am now wearing for the third summer has actually been exploited by the newspaper reporters, in the absence of any other sensation, s subjecting me to the charge of being “well dressed;” and if Tom Reed should cover his shining head with a silk hat he would lose the Republican leadership. The member who lives luxuriously is the exception. r WKat is undoubtedly true of a few officials, especially so of some outside persons of great wealth who reside and entertain in Washington in the winter and are advertised in the society columns of the press, is not at all true of the great majority of the people’s servants.