42
PARTISAN REVIEW
the one carried by the Fish Footman of
Alice in Wonderland.
The
orator of the moment allows himself to be interrupted. "A message from
the President to the Senate," the emissary intones. Another functionary
takes the envelope and bears it to the presiding officer on his dais. The
orator resumes.
Going from the Senate to the House of Representatives is like step-
ping from the Ritz into a flophouse. For the Senate's deep red carpet, a
bluegrey linoleum. For the individual mahogany desks, curving rows of
theatre seats. For somnolent, dignified calm, a monkey-house chatter.
One sniffs for disinfectants.
Democratic government seems to require that those who make the
laws and those who interpret them shall spend a large part of their time
listening, or rather not listening, to other people talk. The Senators don't
listen to each other. They confer on leather settees, they send page boys
on errands, they inspect their fingernails, they read newspapers-while
The Voice goes on and on. The Supreme Court Justices don't listen to
the lawyers. They sit aloft, glazed with ennui, their relief expressing
itself only in the droop of a hand shading a brow.
No one listens because what is being said is rarely of importance.
Or what is said is insignificant because no one ever listens. The data are
all on paper somewhere-or will be presently put on paper. As for the
opinions, these are already well known and neither Senators nor Justices
change their minds easily. The talking seems to be entirely for the sake
of form, a veneer over the crudity of the actual processes of government.
Everybody has his say. Free speech. A fair hearing. In a democracy every
word must be allowed utterance, must be transcribed by the appointed
officials and printed by the Government Printing Office. The U. S. Gov-
ernment is the largest manufacturer of words in the world. The harsh
blue lights burn all night in the interminable pressrooms.
D. C. is also the city of The Record. This is the universal eaves-
dropper. Congressmen make speeches
to
each other but
for
The Record.
Senate committees question important citizens to build up The Record.
Documents, stenographic notes, affidavits, statistical tables, poems, news-
paper clippings, business letters are shovelled into the hopper, to come
out, crushed and dried and standardized, in the impersonal Govern-
mental type face on the regulation Governmental paper. The life of our
times happens all over the country, but only such manifestations as by
chance or favor penetrate the consciousness of D. C., only these are pre-
served in The Record. All day and all night the presses thunder, gallop-
ing to keep up with The Record. Already it would take ten thousand
scholars, twenty thousand, a lifetime to read through the accumulation.
And the avalanche of data pours on, a turbid flood that buries as much
as it uncovers, in which the strongest swimmer drowns.
The lawmakers don't swim. Resting elbows on the school desks,
they let the tide stream onward and think of their constituents.
