Transcripts

Interview 1 – April 7, 2006

JOHNSON:
This is Kathleen Johnson interviewing General Joe Bartlett, former reading clerk and Minority Clerk for the U.S. House of Representatives. This is the first interview with General Bartlett. The date is April 7th, 2006, and the interview is taking place in the Legislative Resource Center, Cannon House Office Building.
I was hoping that we could start off today with some biographical information. When and where were you born?
BARTLETT:
I was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia, on the 7th of August, 1926.
JOHNSON:
What were the names of your parents and their occupations?
BARTLETT:
Well, both of my parents were descendants of early West Virginia pioneers, or Appalachian pioneers. My mother was a Hacker. She was Blanche Hacker Bartlett. She had been a schoolteacher in her earlier years, before she started raising a big family of 10 children. And my father [Flavius Dorsey Bartlett] was an industrial engineer, way, way ahead of his time. He worked for the glass industry—Hazel-Atlas Glass Company—for some 42 years and was involved in time-and-motion studies using motion pictures, long before anybody was accustomed to that method, and long before {laughter} the labor unions learned to dislike it so much. Dad had come up through the ranks and was a very valued member of that executive team.
JOHNSON:
Did you always have an interest in politics, even as a youth?
BARTLETT:
I’m not sure that it took the form of politics. I got involved in politics very young. But I got interested in being a Page as a result of an article in a national magazine which told about a motion picture being made about Pages. And it was a casual interest. I didn’t thereupon decide that I wanted to be a Page. I was just interested in the life. Ironically, both the magazine article and the motion picture which resulted were highly glamorized. And I was quite shocked when I finally arrived, to find that it was not that glamorous. And don’t get me wrong, I was duly impressed. But it was misrepresented on film, which is often the case.
I’m sure you’re wondering, well, how do I get from a magazine to a job as a Page, and it is an unusual story, I suppose. In 1938 I was singled out to be the lone representative of the Schoolboy Patrols of Central West Virginia at their national convention here in Washington. I gained notice because I was just a little guy who couldn’t see over the counter at the 3A (the American Automobile Association) office. And they were intrigued with this and, some months later, really, called my mother and wanted to know if they could bring me to Washington for that parade. Well, they also brought a young West Virginia University journalism graduate, Herb Welch. And he had more imagination and more energy than you can imagine. As a result purely of his imagination, he created a news story which resulted in my being named America’s Typical Schoolboy Patrolman—an awesome title. I {laughter} did nothing to merit that.
I was a patrolman, and I worked at it, like most school safety patrols do. And so, as a result of that publicity—it hit a very slow news day…And there were literally hundreds and hundreds of clippings of this little guy walking down Constitution Avenue.1 Again, I’m the victim of circumstances, I had nothing to [4:00] do with it. Well, it just happened that my sponsor had been a World War I trench mate of Congressman Wright Patman’s.2 And they, the foursome (with their wives) got together socially while we were here. We had come to the Capitol and seen the House in action. As a casual comment, Mrs. Brase, my sponsor, said to Mrs. Patman, “Wouldn’t it be nice if Joe could be a Page?” {laughter} I was not involved.
And so, months later, I was working on a barn roof, patching a barn roof, when I was called home—it’s a long distance, almost an eighth of a mile—back to the house to answer the telephone. I fell from the shed and sprained my ankle, {laughter} but nonetheless hobbled over and got the phone. It was a call from Mrs. Brase, wanting to know if I would like to be a Page for 30 days. Well, of course, I said, “I’d love to, but {laughter} I’m not a bit sure that their folks’ farmhand will be freed to go to Washington.” Well, I approached Mother, and of course she called Father at the factory office. And as it turned out, it was strictly to be for 30 days, the month of August, 1941. And {laughter} that after much mulling over the circumstances, at midnight that night Dad put me on the B&O’s National Limited to come to Washington, and he handed me a $20 bill, which was my total financing. And, of course, the next morning at about 7:00, I arrived at Union Station and looked out that portal at the Capitol dome, and I just went bananas. It was really quite a thrill.
JOHNSON:
How old were you at the time?
BARTLETT:
Fourteen. And, well, that pretty much summarizes how I got to the Capitol. The Patmans and Mrs. Spain, who was their secretary, were most cordial, most kind. And the Congressman from my West Virginia home, Andrew Edmiston, was very cordial. His secretary, Mrs. McGraw, arranged for me to get a room on Wyoming Avenue, where a lady, Mrs. Fisher, kept a rooming house. Many of the roomers were from West Virginia, mostly from Clarksburg. So when I got there they made me feel quite at home.
JOHNSON:
Were these people who worked at the Capitol?
BARTLETT:
No, I don’t believe any of them worked at the Capitol at the time. But they were a nice group, and they did make it easy for me to sort of meld into the Washington scene.
However, this may seem strange now, but the school started at 6:00 in the morning. There was no school in the month of August, but there was soon to be. And when school started, well, at that hour, it meant that I wanted to get closer—or thought I ought to get a little closer—to the Capitol. So I lived on Wyoming Avenue only for one month, and then moved down to 326 Maryland Avenue, NE, and roomed with Mrs. Stewart, and boarded with her sister, Mrs. Wiley, at 314 Maryland Avenue. And that was full of folks, many of them of Capitol Hill. Very delightful experience. Mrs. Stewart was a motherly person. She ran a very {laughter} tight ship, though! Proper conduct was required. And Mrs. Wiley was a marvelous cook. They had a large number of people they fed [8:00] there. Oh, yes, I should say—three meals a day for $24 a month! Now that was a pretty fine arrangement back in 1941. {laughter}
JOHNSON:
Not bad! {laughter}
BARTLETT:
And I was paying $12 for my room with Mrs. Stewart. That’s $12 a month. {laughter} You can see the economy has changed a good deal over the years.
JOHNSON:
How did your 30-day appointment turn into something longer?
BARTLETT:
Well, that’s a good question, a very interesting one. I thoroughly enjoyed being a Page. It was one of the most momentous months of all my years here. Within two weeks, we were voting on the extension of the draft; we had neutrality bills; we had arming of neutral vessels; we had Lend–Lease. All of this in the month of August of 1941. And I was just impressionable enough at that stage to try to absorb it all. Somehow or another, I guess, I realized there was something momentous happening. And that extension of the draft, I remember it. It’s something people cite all the time. As a matter of fact, somebody was citing it to me, and I said, “Oh, yes. I remember. I was there.” And you should have seen the look on {laughter} his face. That was General Leonard Chapman.3 And he was just incredulous, it took him aback. Well, I was there, and I do remember it. And it was a very impressive event.
Well, at the end of the 30 days, it was coming to Labor Day, and it was a holiday weekend, and they were taking the weekend off. And as I look back, I just went to say goodbye to the people who had been kind to me. I went to see South Trimble, who was the Clerk of the House, and thanked him.4 He was a fine old grandfatherly gentleman. Well, we talked a minute. He said, “Now, you stick around.” Well, now, what does “stick around” mean? That doesn’t put you on the payroll or anything. Stick around. “All right, sir.” And then I went down to say goodbye to Joe Sinnott, who was the Doorkeeper of the House, and who had charge of the Pages.5 He was a man very much feared on Capitol Hill. He was as gruff an old curmudgeon as you could find. I liked him! So we hit it off. And after a short conversation he used exactly the same words that South Trimble had used: “Stick around.” Again, that puzzled me.
Well, I went home for the weekend, and used what they had told me as a sufficient reason to come back after Labor Day. And for the next three years I was not on any one Member’s patronage.
JOHNSON:
That’s interesting.
BARTLETT:
I assume that Joe Sinnott, with the collaboration of South Trimble—for as long as he lived—and then with their successors, saw to it that wherever there was an empty spot on the payroll, they’d put Bartlett on. And I had different pay different months. I can remember several of the Members whose payroll I was on who didn’t know that they were employing me. I just got a reputation as a hustler. I was a farm boy; I didn’t know what it was to not work, and to work hard, and work long…Dad’s only advice was, “Get there earlier, and stay later, and do more than is expected of you.” Well, that’s pretty good advice. It wasn’t hard for me. That was sort of my nature. But they saw how I worked, and I was soon assigned as Page overseer, which is nothing more than a senior Page, or someone they designate. And those were enjoyable years.
JOHNSON:
You mentioned many interesting topics, and I wanted to go back to some of them. But I just wanted you to start off with some basics. What was a typical day like for you as a Page in the 1940s?
BARTLETT:
Well, we went to school from 6:00 until 9:00 a.m., and work on the floor started at 9:30. Our first chore was called “filing the [Congressional] Records.” In those [12:00] days, there was a Congressional Record provided for every Member. And we filed it under his seat in a box that’s still there, I’m sure. I don’t think they do that very much anymore, but that was quite a ritual for us in those days. We filed the Records each morning. We started running errands to the buildings, all of which were clocked out of our little location there at the northwest corner of the House Chamber, two benches there where the Pages would assemble and respond to phone calls coming in up until noon. When the House convened, our primary duty at that point became serving the Members on the floor.
And I must tell you one of the things that I would see as something of a distinction of that time: I knew every Member, certainly every Member on our side of the House. And the great thing was that virtually every Member knew me, by name. I don’t think it is that way anymore. And I’m saddened by that because the friendships that I made were {laughter} priceless. I enjoyed them enormously. And, you know, when you see any Member who was here at that time, representing something like, I guess, some 350,000 constituents, and he had been elected to be their Representative in the Congress, there’s something about that person worth knowing and worth studying. And I found that to be true. You’d often see a Member, and you’d say, “Gee! {laughter} How did he get elected?” Well, if you talked to him a little bit, you found out that there was something very special about him that attracted him to his constituency and brought him to Washington as their Representative. So it’s a very, very rich experience, just to be in the presence, in the company, of such a group of chosen representatives of the people. I enjoyed it a lot.
JOHNSON:
Did you work on the floor your entire time as a Page, or did you have other responsibilities, too?
BARTLETT:
No, {laughter} my responsibility during those three years were right on the floor. And, as I say, as overseer I had some responsibilities for the conduct of the Pages and enjoyed that. I graduated from the Page School in ’44 and immediately joined the Marine Corps. The war was still on. I didn’t know what lay ahead for me. It turned out I didn’t have to win the war. It ended before I got there.
But then I came back to Washington again, just to say hello. I had no expectation of returning to the Capitol. But during my visit, Jim Wolfenden, a Congressman from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, God rest his soul, said, “How would you like to be chief Page, chief of the Pages?” Well, I said, “Yegads, that would be wonderful!” It was a staff job. No one as young as I had ever held the job. But Congressman Wolfenden called the Minority Leader, Joe Martin, and apparently resolved the matter over the telephone. And I went to his office, and Mr. Martin welcomed me aboard and signed me on, and I became the chief of Pages. Well, that was my job from 1945 until 1953. And during those years, supervising the Pages was very enjoyable. We even had General Funston’s grandson as a Page, and we formed a drill team and went to Gettysburg to lead the parade for which [16:00] Speaker Joe Martin was the grand marshal, or guest of honor, what have you, and the Pages got to lead his car down the parade in Gettysburg, which was a memorable event for many of them, and for me.6 I thought it was a fine thing. We did a lot of things of that nature. I should say that throughout the earlier years, and particularly during President [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt’s years, Mrs. [Eleanor] Roosevelt took her role as “godmother” of the Pages very seriously. And, bless her heart, she entertained—very graciously and very generously—the Pages during that period. And we had a number of invitations to the White House. As a matter of fact, during those visits Mrs. Roosevelt asked, “Would you like to see the President?” Of course, everybody responded, “Oh, yes!” So we were…
JOHNSON:
Was this in March of 1943? I found a newspaper article that mentioned that the Pages went to visit the White House.
BARTLETT:
Does it mention Joe Bartlett of Clarksburg, West Virginia?
JOHNSON:
And you, specifically. Yes, it does. It said that you were very curious about one of the items that President Roosevelt had on his desk.
BARTLETT:
Well, that was this particular occasion. And there are not very many people alive who have had the privilege of making small talk with President Roosevelt in the Oval Office. But he was a very fascinating person, and it was interesting to study him sitting at his desk. He said this mask had come from China, by way of his grandfather. It was quite heavy. He picked it up and put it on his face, and everybody laughed. He couldn’t have worn it. I don’t know how it could have been used by actors in China, but apparently they held it in place and did their thing. The President was very kind.
But let me say, Mrs. Roosevelt was exceedingly gracious. And I could tell you stories that may be just as well not told. But inasmuch as I had some responsibility for the Pages, their conduct there was my concern. I shared a feeling of responsibility for them. And not all were brought up to be well-mannered. And so we had a couple of unfortunate moments, point being that Mrs. Roosevelt was sitting right beside a boy who showed neglected table manners. If she saw it—and I don’t see how she could help but have seen it—she didn’t take any notice [or] indicate that it happened. And I thought that was exceedingly gracious. Then we had a party out in the Rose Garden, and we were coming back into the theater, and we were coming through a door that had just been painted. And I suggested to her that, well, “I’ll stand here and make sure the Pages don’t get their clothing in the paint.” And in the most gracious way—and I cannot paraphrase what she said, but it was to the effect that, “I’m the hostess. I’ll take care of my guests. Thank you.” {laughter} She stood there and watched each one of them so they would not strike the paint. She was a very gracious lady. And the Pages were really honored to have that kind of attention.
Bess Truman followed on with it. But it was a different atmosphere at the White House after that. And I don’t think that the White House visits have been a regular thing since then, which is regrettable because it was very, very nice.
JOHNSON:
Earlier you mentioned that you went to school in the morning. Were your classes at this time held in the basement of the Capitol?
BARTLETT:
Yes. I’m glad you asked. They were held down in what I think is now the [20:00] air conditioning room. It’s called the West Terrace, right close to where President Reagan established the new location for getting sworn in. It’s in that part of the Capitol, on the west side. It was dank. We generated our own electricity. We…the Capitol generated its own electricity in those days. It was direct current. So if you brought an alternating current device in, you probably lost it. {laughter} But it was done right across the hall from Page School. And the whine of those generators was constant. They were big! And we met down there. It was a private school.7 It was conducted by E. L. Kendall. He was the principal, a very spartan Baptist gentleman. I happened to like him very much. But he was strait-laced, there was no doubt about that. We paid $19 a month for tuition. And there were other maintenance problems down there. The roof leaked. And it was not uncommon to go in there and find that on the floor there was a puddle, and they had to put down planks so we could reach our seats. We’d walk in on the planks, take our seats, hold our feet up, and study Latin. It was unreal. And, incidentally, one time a fellow switched on the light, and the light globe was full of water, and of course it went “kapoop.” {laughter} We had a darkened room. There was another problem down in that area. This was a forsaken area at that time. Nobody went down there without a reason.
Well, we had a person employed at the Capitol at that time who was a rodent control officer. Call him what you will, he was supposed to make sure we got rid of the rats. Well, he wasn’t going to limit his job. But I swear, I think he was breeding rats. There were the biggest rats you ever saw down there! And you’d come around the corner at 6:00 in the morning, and here would be a rat going down the hall, loping like a Scottish terrier or something—that big! And it was something. Then because there were no doors to the generator rooms, there were only grilles, which were up from the floor a short distance—so the rats had easy access to go where they pleased. Well, right after the end of the war, somebody got serious about getting rid of the rodents. And then they realized that there was an even bigger problem: cockroaches. Cockroaches were overrunning the Capitol. And so they brought down from Brooklyn—and I’ve forgotten who did it—but they hired a fellow whose nickname was “Killer Miller.” And “Killer Miller” had a powder, which I think was nothing but DDT, and why not? It was good stuff. But you could, for years—and I mean many years—you could open a desk drawer in any office and out would tumble this little paper holder of this powdery material, which had been stuck up against the wall of each drawer of every office in the building. Miller earned his money, if anybody ever did, because he really got around. And for a long time, it was very effective. We didn’t have cockroaches. {laughter} “Killer Miller” was quite a character around the Capitol for quite a while.
JOHNSON:
Can you describe your curriculum? What were the classes that you took? [24:00]
BARTLETT:
We took a regular high school curriculum. You had some choices, just like any high school. Let me simply say that some thought we were not getting a very good education. And some thought we were not getting our $19-a-month’s worth. But along came the tests that they gave: the A-5 and the A-12, the B-5 and the B-12—tests for officer material for World War II. And out at Eastern High School they had kids come from all over Washington for those tests being administered by the Army and the Navy. And the irony is that the little delegation that went out from Capitol Page School scored extremely well as compared to other schools in the District. You know, that sort of left you without much of an argument that the schooling hadn’t been adequate. We had a Capitol policeman—fellow named Pousson. We had bureaucrats—a patent attorney named Cooper, who was a genius. I loved his teaching. I took physics with him. He was just marvelous. We had a fellow named Lewis, who created on his own, incidentally, an embassy visitation group, which was very good. The kids went to a different embassy every Saturday. And he had been a {laughter} West Virginia bug inspector, where they used to flag you down for Japanese beetles. And he had been in that, until one day he commandeered a car, got in trouble, and had to escape to Washington. So he was teaching English—and very good at it, as a matter of fact—in the Page School. So, no, we had an interesting group. But as I say, Mr. Kendall ran a tight ship. And he was pretty determined that each of these classes would provide what was necessary for a high school education. And I think he fairly well succeeded. Incidentally, in those days we had senior classes. They no longer have seniors, which I think is too bad. But we had a graduating class. We had a ceremony in the Ways and Means Committee room. Yes!
JOHNSON:
Mr. Oliver gave us this image.8
BARTLETT:
Isn’t that something?
JOHNSON:
Yes. Since we’re talking about it, could you describe it for me, please?
BARTLETT:
Well, the picture that I have here shows the graduating class of 1944. And Senator Harold Burton of Ohio was the speaker. He had been the former mayor of Cleveland and [was] soon to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He’d been very much interested in the Pages all along. Harold Burton was a splendid man. [John] Sparkman of Alabama is sitting beside him. And the minister is the Reverend Frederic Brown Harris, the chaplain of the Senate, again a {laughter} man I really learned to like a great deal.9 Starting at the other side was Principal E. L. Kendall. I got along with him very well. The next one is Dr. Robert Haycock, superintendent of D.C. Public Schools. And then, of course, in the center is the First Lady of the land, Eleanor Roosevelt, who handed us our [28:00] diplomas and wished us well. And she was a gracious, gracious lady.
JOHNSON:
And the graduates at this time were House Pages and Senate Pages?
BARTLETT:
There were House Pages and Senate Pages, one elevator operator that I see, who was {laughter} related to the Architect of the Capitol. I think he was his grandson. And there may have been a Supreme Court Page, I’m not real sure. But mostly House and Senate Pages, and all of them made a pretty good account of themselves after that. Many of the Pages beyond this did. They’ve had a recent reunion of the 1950 Pages, who have been—had been—kind enough to ask me to attend. And to the extent that I’ve been able to, I have. This particular era (1944) did not remain close, for whatever reason. I’ve known a couple of them relatively well, one of them because he became a Marine: Randlett T. Lawrence, who was center for Navy football and was East Coast boxing champion of the Navy and was a tough Marine colonel.
Now, of the Pages that I supervised and watched graduate, well, I have [a] much closer relationship with some of them. One of them, I grieved his passing recently. He was a Paulist priest, Bob Curtis from Silver Spring. I don’t like to single Bob out, but he was sort of typical of the achievers within the group of Pages that I supervised, and for whom I’ve taken a great deal of pride.
JOHNSON:
I just had one more question about your education.
BARTLETT:
Yes.
JOHNSON:
Did you receive any training to prepare you for what was going to happen on the House Floor, for the proceedings that were going to take place?
BARTLETT:
No. That’s an interesting point. Whatever training we got there, we received from the older supervisors on the floor. As you probably know, the work of Pages, even then, was divided into several kinds. We had the so-called bench Pages, they were the primary group. We had the telephone Pages, usually somebody who was showing some special ability as a bench Page. And then we had door Pages, who were often merely a means of placing some patronage. Older people who were no longer suitable for the work inside would work on the doors. I could cite one very special one, Buddy Jones. Buddy Jones had the east door. He was the grandson of Judge Marvin Jones. Judge Marvin Jones probably spent more time in Speaker Rayburn’s office than anybody who wasn’t on the payroll. Judge Marvin Jones was the brother of Metze Jones, which doesn’t mean anything to you except that she was married to Sam Rayburn.10 And everyone here thought Sam Rayburn was an incorrigible bachelor and never dreamed that he’d ever been married. His [32:00] closest Texas friends did not know he had been married. But he had been. How that marriage terminated, I don’t know, whether it was divorce or an annulment, I would rather imagine. But there were Sam Rayburn Joneses in that family before they were married. He was that close to the family. So Buddy Jones, when he had that east door, he had pretty good entrée because he was very close to Speaker Rayburn. But he was a nice fellow—very good Page. He happened to be tall and lanky, tall enough not to be a House Page anymore. And he later became vice president of an aluminum company here and very prominent in Washington lobbying and social circles. Very fine fellow.
JOHNSON:
With the Pages falling under the jurisdiction of the Doorkeeper’s office, when you were a Page you worked under two doorkeepers. You mentioned Joe Sinnott. And then there also was Ralph Roberts.11
BARTLETT:
Ralph Roberts, correct.
JOHNSON:
Can you describe these two men?
BARTLETT:
Well, Joe Sinnott, as I say, was regarded as an awfully gruff curmudgeon. He scared people to death. I never could quite understand it because I found him to be a very easy person to get along with. But, nonetheless, there was that fear. His daughter worked as his secretary. There is a rumor {laughter} that she was married at the time, and he didn’t know it. And she was married to one of his subordinates. And this became a big rumor. Whether it’s true or not, I cannot verify, but I think it was. {laughter} But I liked him. His devotion to the House was unquestionable. He was getting up in years, and he died during the ’40s. And Ralph Roberts, who had been his assistant, succeeded him. Ralph was an old Marine master sergeant. And so we were good friends. And Ralph was later Clerk of the House, from Indiana—a good fellow. I enjoyed his friendship and I miss him. He was a good friend.
JOHNSON:
Did you notice any difference in the way the Page program was run, between Joe Sinnott and Ralph Roberts?
BARTLETT:
Probably. Joe Sinnott took a very close interest in how they were performing. Ralph Roberts stood back and tried to get his subordinates to make sure they were doing it right. And as a Marine master sergeant, that’s the way he would have done it. But it was his way. As a matter of fact, I remember at times I would bring to his attention something that I did not think was in his interest. And his answer was always, “They’ll find out. They’ll find out.” In other words, the time would prove him right. Unfortunately, time was not in his favor as Clerk of the House, as you may recall. He had a difficult time. Congressman [William] Pat Jennings of Virginia was not his friend. And they had a confrontation. And then Ralph—there was a power struggle between the Clerk’s office and the Committee on House Administration. And again, it was Ralph’s way to just think he could wait [36:00] it out and that people would see he was doing the right thing. He should have been more responsive to the problems. But that was Ralph’s way, and who am I to fault it? He was my friend.
JOHNSON:
You mentioned South Trimble, who was Clerk at the time when you were a Page.
BARTLETT:
Yes.
JOHNSON:
Did you get to know any of the other House Officers?
BARTLETT:
Yes, I sure did. I would say that, again, the Congress being absent a good deal of the year, in the old days, the truth of the matter was the House was run by the Clerk of the House. And South Trimble was a very powerful man. He was dignified and a splendid gentleman. His counterpart in our party was William Tyler Page.12 Now William Tyler Page was the Minority Clerk. He, anonymously, wrote “The American’s Creed,” which won first place in a national competition for an American creed. And for years, long before you would remember, every Congressman got a huge supply of “The American’s Creed,” and they would distribute them to schoolchildren all over the country, by the millions. And William Tyler Page was a splendid man. He had that claw-hammered coat, you know. He dressed a fashion—a formality—100 years earlier. But he and Senator [Clyde] Hoey continued to do this into the 20th century. I enjoyed visiting with William Tyler Page. And I must confess, if I ever had an ambition in the process of my career—and I didn’t really have very many, because I thought how unrealistic it was for me to presume that fate might favor me that way, and I wasn’t kidding myself—but I so admired William Tyler Page and his knowledge of Congress that, yes, I said, “Gee, wouldn’t it be wonderful to follow in his footsteps.” And so I must say, when I finally was elected to that job, it had much more significance for me than many people knew. Because I held up the memory of William Tyler Page right then and there. I’ve quoted him in speeches repeatedly—a very good man.
You asked about South Trimble. He really conducted the work of the House. And that’s how he could say to me, “Stick around.” Because at that time he and Joe Sinnott could do just about anything they decided to do. Now, let’s face it, there’s always this controversy about the powerful staff people on the Hill. Neither one of them would have done anything contrary to what they knew the leadership would want or allow them to do. Probably the most powerful man in recent times would have been Lew Deschler, the House Parliamentarian.13 He would never extend himself to presume authority that was not his. And that was true of South Trimble. He knew what was expected of him. He knew that whatever he did he could justify to the leadership of the Congress if he had to. And so there’s a restraint upon, in a sense, responsibility in those jobs. Did all of them exercise it? No, we had a few people who didn’t exercise that kind of [40:00] restraint, and some who suffered serious consequences for not having done it. But with a South Trimble or a Joe Sinnott, you never had to worry that they were going to do something beyond their authority because they just weren’t going to do it. They knew, whatever they did, they could go to Speaker Rayburn and tell him why they’d done it and receive his approval. That is just was the way they conducted themselves.
Incidentally, in those days there was a great deal of—what would you say—interrelationship between key figures on the Hill, families that got together: the Architect’s (David Lynn) family and the Clerk’s family. And their kids married. And you have familiar names to this day. I don’t think it happened to Joe Sinnott, {laughter} bless his soul.
But there were other key figures around. We had a fellow named Gus Cook, who was the assistant Architect of the Capitol, who was the executive assistant because he did everything imaginable. And there’s a story that goes that when the queen of England came here in 1939, Gus put on that show, quite a show.14 Oh, my goodness. So many things that I heard back about that. But they carpeted the grand rotunda with a plush, plush carpet, red—bright red, royal red. And somehow [or] another, nobody’s ever been able to find that carpet since! {laughter}
JOHNSON:
This was before your time, so other people had told you about it?
BARTLETT:
That was before my time. Well, yes. When I arrived, we were still reliving the mysteries of the last few years. {laughter}
JOHNSON:
You mentioned a while back, or alluded to, the cordial relationship among Members and between Members and Pages and staff. What do you remember about Speaker Rayburn?
BARTLETT:
Nothing but wonderful things. He was a super presiding officer. His romance—his love—was the House of Representatives. And he was a big man—not a big man physically, as a matter of fact, he was quite slight. Most people don’t know that because he had the command presence of looking larger than life. He’d put four fingers of his hand in his right coat pocket—and the cigarette, unfortunately, all too often in his left hand. I don’t know that the Republicans ever fully appreciated it, but after I went up on the rostrum and where I was within close earshot of him, and learned my trade as reading clerk just a few feet from him and that made me privy to an awful lot of conversations, that I, of course, kept in confidence, always…But I can tell you that there were many times when [44:00] Members would rush up and want to do something expedient to take advantage of the minority. And I can remember Mr. Rayburn on more than one occasion saying, “No, no. We’re not going to do that.” He felt a responsibility to protect the rights of the minority. And that’s an unusual characterization. You don’t find that very often. Not because the people occupying that chair aren’t good guys. But they don’t understand, sometimes, the nuances of legislative decorum and their responsibility to all the Members. And Mr. Rayburn did understand that. He was just a good man.
I think some of his biographers, who have sought to make him out to be a real partisan, for whatever reason, are wrong. I think they do him a disservice. Sure, he was a Democrat and a leader of Democrats, and he believed that the Democrat Party was the way to a lot of things. But he was a very big man. And his speeches down there about, “No more East or West, no more North or South,” I’ve heard him make that. And I’ve heard him rally patriots in the well of the House in a way that…He showed that he was much bigger than any petty, partisan point of view.
At the end of my 20th year, which of course was August 1, 1961, I went to see him. And Miss Clary, his devoted secretary, was there, and I said, “Just like to see the Speaker.” Incidentally, he was in the little room that had formerly belonged to Minority Leader Joe Martin. And after they’d changed places a couple of times, they got together and said, “This is silly for us to keep moving. Let’s just stay where we are.” And he was actually in that little room and was Speaker of the House, but he was in that, and I’ve forgotten the number. But Miss Clary said to me, “Well, he’s taking a nap,” and “Would you come back?” And I said, “Sure.” I turned to go out the door and had just about reached the door, when his door opened, and Miss Clary said, “Joe wanted to see you for a moment.” And he said, “Well, come on in.” And as we were walking in, he calls back over his shoulder, “What do you want me to do, double your salary or something?” {laughter} And I said, “Yes, Mr. Speaker. You said it. I didn’t.” {laughter} And we proceeded to have a fabulous session. I only wanted to recall that first day. I wanted to talk to him about that and thank him because he’d been so courteous. And he wanted to talk about other things. He wanted to talk about a lot of other things. And, in retrospect, I know why: He knew how sick he was. And he was trying to plant a few thoughts in the mind of a younger person, I’m sure, and somebody he trusted. It saddens me to realize that. He told a story about flying home to Austin, I think he said, but I’ve forgotten which airport. It really isn’t significant. But he noticed that a photographer was just trying to get his picture, and he was trying to maneuver all around. So then Mr. Rayburn said, “And I just, every time he got in [48:00] position, I’d turn around.” And so there was a little dance going on between him and the photographer. And he said {laughter} finally the photographer put his camera down at his side and said, “Mr. Speaker, if you know any other way I can make a living, I wish you’d tell me.” {laughter} Mr. Rayburn laughed, and he said, “I told him to go ahead and take all the pictures he wanted.” {laughter}
And I told you about his stature, which was really quite remarkable that people thought of him as a big man, when he really wasn’t. But there were other physical characteristics that people didn’t know [about]. When Felix de Weldon was commissioned by the Texas State Society to do his statue for the new Rayburn House Office Building, Mr. Felix de Weldon—who was a friend of mine, I might add, but he said that he knew Speaker Rayburn.15 Well, his statue shows that he didn’t, no matter what he said. So on the day that the statue was to be unveiled… And I wish I had a perfect recall on all these names, but I don’t. I cannot think of the old fellow who was [a] newspaperman, a very close confidant of the Speaker’s.16 But everybody knew him and liked him. And so when they unveiled the statue, all the reporters followed him because he was a reporter that had been close to the Speaker, and they wanted his comments. So he walked around the statue two or three times, and he slowly observed, “Well, I think he got the back of his head.” {laughter} That was his judgment. Well, sadly—and Felix was a wonderful character—I think that’s about all he got.
A couple of things he didn’t seem to realize: Mr. Rayburn had no ears. I don’t know what happened to them. They’d been frostbitten or something. But he had just little bitsy things for ears that just…He also—he had no eyebrows; he had no facial hair. I don’t know why, but he didn’t have. And it shows up in that statue, that makes it look a little odd. I don’t know why—never had anybody give me any explanation of these things about him. But, oh, he was a splendid man. I wouldn’t do anything to diminish his image. But those were physical characteristics that Felix de Weldon {laughter} obviously didn’t know [about]. Why he didn’t find out, I’m not sure.
JOHNSON:
As a Republican Page, did you have a chance to interact a lot with the Minority Leader, Joe Martin?
BARTLETT:
As chief of the Pages, I had a lot to do with him. Again—fine, fine man. He didn’t go to college; he was helping other members of his family through college. He became a newspaperman. He was not sophisticated—very earthy, very wise. Very wise. I remember one time, right after the 80th Congress had been defeated in ’48, and most of us were going around like it was the end of the world, and Joe Pew’s daughter came down with a class from Hood College, I think.17 I was asked to take them into the cloakroom and see if we could get the Speaker to talk to them. And Mr. Martin was glad to. I’ll never forget: Here we were, really at the dregs, politically. We thought this was the end of our political fortunes. And he came in there with the most upbeat, positive, and not at all Pollyannaish presentation. He was giving historical statistics to show that things could rebound. Well, of course, you know, less than four years later we elected Eisenhower [52:00] President. So it wasn’t the end of the world, we didn’t know it. But he sent those college girls home with a very positive message and just sort of amused me. But his English, his grammar, was not the greatest. When I became reading clerk…One thing a reading clerk tries to avoid is the mispronunciation of words. If you mispronounce it, you’re apt to mispronounce it at the wrong time. And it was kind of funny. Lawyers and doctors and different professional groups have a lot of jargon that they use, and it’s sort of accepted. So I used to go to that huge dictionary off to the left of the Speaker’s Rostrum to find that my lawyer partner was misusing words because the lawyer profession misuses them.
Okay, back to Joe Martin. Joe Martin, bless his heart, had certain words that he could not pronounce. One of them is a word that you use often in legislative proceedings, and that word is “pursuant.” He could not say “pursuant.” {laughter} He said, “perswayant,” “perswayant.” Always. Well, the trouble was, one day I got up there, and here I was, and sure enough, I used it his way. {laughter} And that was rather unprofessional. But I was very fond of him, and I was just really, really sorry that he didn’t retire a little earlier. He was a very pathetic sight. And people who only knew him walking on one or two canes, with very relaxed facial features, and who saw him only at that time, they thought that was Joe Martin. That wasn’t Joe Martin. You know, that was what happens to people when they get old. I wish he had been back at Cape Cod, or whatever it is up there, and relaxed by himself and not let people have that sad image. He got defeated in the primary, which shouldn’t have happened. And, oh boy, that saddened me because he had been such a splendid Member of Congress. Elsie Gridley and Jim Milne were his staff people. They really ran a good shop. That was a real good team. I think of them often, remember them with tremendous affection because they were good people. And Joe Martin certainly was. His mannerisms were different.
When the Puerto Rican shooting came—and I don’t want to jump ahead here because you’ve got plenty of time to get back to that—but they’ve always kidded him.18 He was presiding. And there are some pillars at the top of the rostrum. Standing between them he could not have seen Gallery 11. So he got back between those pillars.19 {laughter} Oh, golly. He was a good guy. And when we get around to it, remind me to tell you about Judge Louis Graham’s attempting an amendment that upset Joe Martin.
JOHNSON:
One of our previous oral history interviewees, Glen Rupp was a Page during the [56:00] 1930s, and he mentioned belonging to the Little Congress Club.20 Was this an organization that you were familiar with?
BARTLETT:
Yes. Though I think it broke up during the war years. But it was still going when I came here. And I knew some of them. We had a Congressman from Texas, Nat Patton—not Wright Patman, but Nat Patton—and he had a daughter, Bonnie, who was one of the most popular people on Capitol Hill, a dynamic gal. Kept her daddy out of trouble often. But she was a key figure in that organization at the time I came. I don’t know what ever…I’m sure Bonnie’s gone on to her reward long since. But, yes, I was aware of it. And, of course, again, you know, you’re talking about what happened just before I came. And the fact that they keep talking about it…Well, the alleged stacking of the Little Congress by staffer Lyndon Johnson was still very much in conversation. And, of course, he became a Member of the House soon thereafter. And so that activity, I think that it lost a good deal of favor with the leadership about that time. I think there was some presumption, and some press, that the leadership wasn’t crazy about, and I may be guessing a little bit here. Nothing I ever heard on the part of the leaders—either staff or membership—suggested they wanted to encourage reassembling that group. So I think it fell upon bad times, for whatever reason. You know, you would not like to read in the paper that somebody who has been elected “Speaker” of the Little Congress was assuming stature. You can easily see why that might not find favor. Furthermore, the wartime Congress got very busy, not like the old days when Congress would come and meet and leave town for extended periods. And in those old days, you had a few staff around with not a whole lot to do. And so they had time to get into mischief. {laughter}
JOHNSON:
Many sources have indicated that one of the reasons why Congress was able to stay in for longer sessions, especially during the summer, was the advent of air conditioning. By the time you started as a Page in 1941, were all of the office buildings air conditioned?
BARTLETT:
I don’t believe so. I don’t believe so. For a lot of reasons. You had air circulation. The House Chamber at that time was in real bad repair. The roof had sunken 18 inches. And they could not repair it because the war was upon us. And they put up a superstructure that looked like the inside of a dirigible or something that held the roof up, until 1949. And we not only didn’t have air conditioning. (A farm boy doesn’t worry too much about heat. But I was aware that it was not comfortable in the chamber.) But we didn’t even have lighting. We had skylights in the ceiling. We had the seals of the various states in stained glass around the perimeter of the ceiling. And so on a good, sunny day, we had a bright chamber. On a day that was not bright—rainy day or after sundown—the chamber would get terribly dark. And what lighting they had, they didn’t like to use. I know when we came in to work on Saturdays, it was dim.
You asked about a Page schedule. In those days, we worked a half a day Saturday—every Saturday—and worked hard. Because that was the day we took [60:00] those Congressional Records out from the seats and did what we called “stripping the Records.” And we took them down to a dungeon down below what was the then the Doorkeeper’s Office. We had a—I don’t know what it is now because they’ve decided to use much of that space for other purposes, but it was a dungeon full of steel lockers. And we put the Congressional Records in there in order by date so that we could…As Members would call, “I need a copy,” [or] “I need 10 copies,” of a particular date. “Be right over.” And they were always amazed that we had those resources. Well, the reason we had them was because the Pages spent Saturday taking them from the floor and putting them on file downstairs. And it was true, we were able to make a pretty good account of ourselves in retrieving those and supplying the needs of the Members.
Then we did what was called “skeletonizing.” I made quite a reputation of this. But on Saturdays, when we didn’t have any other thing to do, we would take a Record and strip out those things where 10 Members would have something significant in a Record. So I would skeletonize a Record, provide 10 Members with that portion of the Record. See, this was before Xerox. This was before duplication, printing. And so to be able to give a Member 50 copies of a choice item, he was very appreciative. This is why they knew my name. {laughter}
JOHNSON:
Was this something that you started on your own?
BARTLETT:
Yes. Yes, I could not see wasting what was a good raw material. And it is absolutely true, our technology has really changed so many of the things that we do on the Hill. And that was one of them. I was able to accommodate a lot of people by doing that. And it was not a problem. I was happy to do it—take a ruler and rip out a page and provide that service.
JOHNSON:
Going back to the air-conditioning topic for a second, many newspaper accounts indicate that the chamber was air conditioned. Was it just a problem of it not functioning?
BARTLETT:
It was air-circulated. And I don’t think…How much it was treated, I don’t…But if it was air conditioned, it was primitive. You see, back in those days, a lot of air conditioning was nothing more than circulating the air coming off of ice. That literally was true. We used to judge national convention demonstrations. You’re familiar with that. Back in those days—not so much anymore—but you’d nominate somebody, and as soon as that nomination was completed, you have a demonstration. And you’d run around the hall—parade around the hall and stir up the delegates. They used to measure the enthusiasm on behalf of a particular candidate on the basis of how much that…They’d measure the air conditioning. And they measured it in terms of tons of ice. I don’t know why, but they did. And that would indicate the amount of enthusiasm. I was an officer of the 1948 convention. And that was primitive in so many ways. First televised convention. Very interesting. If I may jump ahead just a little bit, only on that aspect of why Congress left town.
JOHNSON:
Sure.
BARTLETT:
And I think overall, it has not been a good thing because it runs contrary to what Howard Baker talked about, a citizen legislature, dividing their time between a [64:00] civilian occupation and their legislative work. But I remember very distinctly when we had a particular pay raise up. And Hale Boggs was then the Majority Leader. And he said, “You know, this means we’re going to be here the year round. This is going to be a year-round occupation with this particular pay raise.” Said it in the well of the House. And sure enough, I saw that as the determination that Congress was going to change its way of doing business. I’ve written a little bit on this subject. Someday I’ll try to find a copy of that thing and show you, that I think, in order to meet the constitutional requirement for the right of petition, the right of citizens to consult with their representatives, I think we’re defeating it by the present system of undesignated times for home work, which, of course, is often a joke. If you want to talk about that another time, I’ll be glad to renew my familiarity with the thing I wrote. But I wrote that for—the U.S. Chamber of Commerce asked me to, back some years ago. And I went down and presented to them what I thought should be some of the reorganizations of Congress. And that was what was involved in it, basically, was to reschedule and to create a new calendar for legislative business, which would include scheduled times to be home.
I’ve heard this so many times, this air conditioning. Well, I must say that it was not comfortable. And long before my time, before air conditioning—or air circulation or whatever—was there, I’m told that it was just terrible. And then when the British burned the Capitol [during the War of] 1812, the Congress met at what they called “the oven,” over in the building across the street, where the Supreme Court is now. And apparently it must have been really awful.21
But we certainly take air conditioning for granted in this day and age. And it does cause us to ignore whatever the weather happens to be here and keep us…Maybe we {laughter} stay inside and stay here a lot longer because it is pleasant.
JOHNSON:
That’s true. I’m going to take this opportunity to stop and switch tapes.

End of Part One – Beginning of Part Two

JOHNSON:
You were a Page during World War II. And I wanted to ask you some specific questions about that period. For obvious reasons, there was little notice before FDR’s Joint Session on December 8th, 1941.22 So, first off, I wanted to know if you were involved in the preparations for this very quick Joint Session.
BARTLETT:
Probably as involved as any Page would be, or any staffer. But, you know, we felt the tremendous importance of this occasion. I came to Page School that morning, and I had to present my pass seven times between First Street, where the Supreme Court is, and the Capitol entrance. And I was showing it to a bayoneted soldier. Overnight they had put up tents and perimeter fence around the Capitol. Jump ahead just a little bit to say that they even put up anti-aircraft weapons on top of the Longworth Building. And if you were in the Longworth Building, and you look at the bank of elevators on the seventh floor, there’s a door to the left there. That door leads to stairs up to a loft, which leads up to the roof, which is where they had their antiaircraft guns. And after the session that day, I went over and went up there and, ho, ho, ho, I helped them load ammunition. The truth of the matter was, they tolerated me; I couldn’t have been much help. But they were lacing .50-caliber ammunition in metal straps. And I tried to help. But that was the conditions in which we found ourselves up there that day.
JOHNSON:
And these were put in place overnight?
BARTLETT:
Overnight. They must have anticipated the need and had a plan. I would expect them to. That day was very, very exciting in many ways. At one point I had a rush to go over to the building, I don’t remember what the purpose was. But I fell and skinned my knee and damaged my trouser leg in the course of doing it. And I got back on the floor in time for the events. I remember it very, very well. And I remember, when we finally got around to voting on it, which was the next day or so, which exciting sessions…What is the matter with me? The Representative who voted against the war…
JOHNSON:
Oh, Jeannette Rankin.23
BARTLETT:
Jeannette Rankin. Well, Jeannette Rankin was sitting in the back row, and I was standing behind the back row, when Harold Knutson—who had been the only other Member of the House at that time who had voted against World War I—and he came running back to her and earnestly pleaded, “Jeannette, Jeannette, don’t do it!”24 He knew what she was fixing to do. And she had such a look on [4:00] her face, you know, this obstinate look. “Oh, you’ll get in all kinds of trouble. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” He was begging her. And, of course, when came time for her vote, she voted no. And was the only one. It was her second time of sacrificing her seat in Congress for a vote against war. The House adjourned very shortly [thereafter]. And in those days, the press was allowed to come onto the floor as soon as the gavel came down. And they did. Miss Rankin ran into the cloakroom. We had very large phone booths, not like the ones now. And she jumped in a phone booth and closed the door and put her knee up against the door and called the Capitol Police to come and rescue her, to escort her back to her office.
JOHNSON:
There’s a couple of famous pictures of that moment.
BARTLETT:
Are there?
JOHNSON:
There’s one where Joe Martin is speaking to her while she’s in the telephone booth.
BARTLETT:
Is that right? I’ve not seen that. Well, that’s interesting. I don’t remember Joe Martin being in there. But, of course, he would have been. I just don’t remember that aspect of it. But we had an old…Mike Bunke was in charge of the cloakroom at that time, from Chicago.25 And I remember Mike Bunke was really upset when all the press guys came running in there to chase her. And he was trying to throw them out. He’d been a part of that old Cook County crowd. [Robert] Chiperfield was his Congressman. My gosh, that’s ancient history! But Mike was excitable. And this upset him quite a bit, that they were taking those privileges about the floor.
The security arrangements in the Capitol were kind of interesting. They divided security of the Capitol between the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police. Captain Bert Sheldon was in charge of the detail for the Metropolitan Police. And they came on at 4:00 in the afternoon. And they maintained security for the building overnight, until 8:00 the next morning, when the Capitol Police would take over again. This went on the whole war. Bert Sheldon was a wonderful friend of mine, a great Lincoln scholar. And, oh heck, a lot of fine memories of meeting with his Lincoln scholar group from the University of Harrogate, Tennessee, who came up here, and they would meet and discuss Lincoln at great length.26 And they were all scholars, except I didn’t feel that I was entitled to any credentials in that group at all. But I was privileged to be with them. But Captain Sheldon’s maintenance of the Capitol…Incidentally, down in the crypt…Let’s see if I can tell you where. Just inside of where the sales desk is down there in the East Front of the Capitol, there was a stairs.27 It was a strange-looking thing, but right there in that crypt, stairs ran down below. That’s where they had soldiers bivouacked, underneath there, and police. And during the night session, the police would be taking over. There were accommodations that were found down there that I’m sure you couldn’t find today. They’ve been gobbled up by these private offices and different things, but I doubt that you could find it. Incidentally, let me say, that afternoon (December 8, 1941) that we were up the loft of the [8:00] Longworth Building, preparing for an air war. The mood was serious. Nobody was kidding. They were looking to the eastern horizon. And I was, too. They were sincerely expecting to see the Luftwaffe come in from the east.28 That’s hard to realize now. We had a lot of air raid…
JOHNSON:
Drills?
BARTLETT:
Drills. We had lots of them. Later on, as it went on, we got less and less uptight about it. Because it was obvious that we need not fear an air attack. But that took a little while. When the Army realized it wasn’t going to happen, without telling anybody, they took the antiaircraft guns off of the Longworth Building and off of the Department of Commerce at the same time and put up imitations. They were two-by-fours and what have you, and hammered together in the shape of a gun. {laughter} And Congressman [John] Rankin climbed up there and found out that they were all fakes, and he came back to the House Floor and very indignantly said that he didn’t appreciate being protected with these fakes. It was quite a speech. {laughter} I’ll bet later on he was sorry he had made that speech.29 Because it just—it showed that he was more concerned about his own survival, I guess, than whatever. But it made no sense to keep real antiaircraft weapons up there any longer. And that’s what it was all about.
JOHNSON:
Since this was such a historic day, I was hoping that you could set the scene during President Roosevelt’s Joint Session. Was the mood somber, or was it more charged? Can you describe your recollections?
BARTLETT:
Well, you had a lot of different moods. And I’ll tell you why. Secretary of the Navy [Frank] Knox put out a public statement immediately that the United States would blast the Japanese out of the Pacific in two weeks.30 Now, of course, he probably was told to make that speech, and he knew perfectly well it wasn’t going to happen. But there were some people who believed it and thought that this was something we could do in two weeks. So you had a mix. You had a lot of people who were draftable age, who were eligible for service. They took it very seriously. Some of them rushed to join or what have you. We had some Members of Congress in that group, several, including Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Van Zandt, Mel Maas, and Al Gore [Sr.]. There were several who responded to the thing at that time. But it was a broad measure of different attitudes toward the war. I think there were plenty of old-timers with a mature perspective who were very concerned, very, very gravely concerned. The importance of passing the resolution, when we got around to that, that was serious business. I don’t know how Jeannette Rankin could have resisted the appeal. I don’t know. It was a fixation with her. We corresponded after she left Congress, and she was an unusual lady. They had a little reunion here recently and honored her, and I felt [12:00] kind of put out that I wasn’t invited. {laughter} I would have liked to have been there as probably the only one there who would have remembered her. And she was an interesting person. We’ve had so many interesting Congressmen, women Congressmen. I talked to Charlotte Reid just recently and Shirley Pettis.31 I talked to both of them recently on the phone, just to learn how they were. And they’ve each left their mark. Charlotte, kidding her because she’s the same age as Gerald Ford, which is 92 now.32 And she used to be featured on the Don McNeill Breakfast Club.33 It was a famous radio program. And she was the vocalist on Don McNeill’s radio program. I remember the commercial songs. So I always kid her by recalling them. Yes, you know. But her husband was the candidate for Congress and died, and she took up the contest, won, and was a fine Member, fine Member.
JOHNSON:
The Joint Session was broadcast by radio on December 8th, 1941. And one of the radio broadcasts had kept the microphone on inadvertently. And so afterwards—this is something that Walter Cronkite chronicled—you were able to hear what was happening on the floor and Speaker Rayburn and Joe Martin asking for unanimous passage of the war resolution. One of the things you’re also able to hear in the background was some of the banter between Speaker Rayburn and Jeannette Rankin, and Jeannette Rankin trying to get the attention of the chair. Were you aware of this? Did you recall this at all?
BARTLETT:
I’ll have to think on it. I do not recall it. There is no reason why it shouldn’t have been.
JOHNSON:
Well, I’m sure there were many things going on. You could just hear in the background that she was trying to get recognized by the chair, and Speaker Rayburn was ignoring her at this point.
BARTLETT:
Was he? Well, of course, you don’t recognize somebody during the call of the roll. And I’m assuming the roll was under way. If it was prior to the call of the roll, I may not have been there. Maybe I had come off the floor.
JOHNSON:
This was prior to the call of the roll.
BARTLETT:
Well, I may not have been in the chamber. Because I don’t remember that, specifically.
JOHNSON:
Do you remember the reaction when she stood up and voted no?
BARTLETT:
Everything was focused on her. And by that, I mean whatever happened, whatever anybody else did, the whole thing, and, of course, that scene of Harold Knutson. Harold Knutson, incidentally, had to leave Congress under a cloud. I don’t know whether you ever knew that or not. You know, people think certain things that are happening never happened before. Well, they have happened before. And he had a situation down in Alexandria, and quietly terminated his service. It was one of those things. It was kind of sad. He was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the 80th Congress and had a formidable position. You know, inasmuch as that they didn’t write about it, wasn’t newspaper copy, so [16:00] whatever you heard, you heard rumors, and you didn’t know how much of it was authentic. Rumors have a way of being less than perfect. But that was what we heard at the time. But his reaction that day, he was trying to protect her from making what amounted, in his mind, to a terrible mistake. Rather interesting that she could not see it as he saw it at that point. I don’t know how anybody, after the attack on Pearl Harbor…Maybe we weren’t given sufficient evidence of what had happened out there, you know, that we’re talking about a very short time, and here you’ve got Secretary Knox saying we’re going to clean this thing up in a hurry. So there was plenty of reason for people to believe it wasn’t as grave a situation as it certainly turned out to be in every respect, including the casualties at Pearl Harbor, about which we’re probably still learning.
JOHNSON:
Another one of our oral history interviewees was Irving Swanson, former reading clerk.34 And he was the person that read the roll on this historic day. Did you get to know Mr. Swanson?
BARTLETT:
I knew Irv Swanson real well. I would not have remembered that. He called the roll. But I knew Irv very well, and he was a good reading clerk and a good guy. Irv Swanson and George Maurer were the two reading clerks I guess I got to know best. I don’t know what year.35 George had been the timekeeper of the House, and, when the vacancy occurred in the reading clerk’s post…[Francis Eugene] Tad Walter of Pennsylvania was his Congressman. He arranged for George to just be promoted into that job. Unlike when I went after it! {laughter} There were 21 candidates, and we had a terrible time. I hated that, to have to compete for something like that, and then audition. And the whole thing was very stressful. However, it turned out all right.
I guess I shouldn’t complain. {laughter} But I was so amused when you told me earlier that you had talked to Irv Swanson. And the reason I was, was because, unfortunately, I had assumed that he had passed on to his reward. Because I just hadn’t heard a thing about him in years. And the people that worked around the desk when he was up there—Curtis Christianson and Frank Hoye and all those people—are gone, long since.36 So I just assumed that Irv was among them. But it surprised me, and pleased me, to know that he’s still enjoying life. And I hope someday to be able to read his memoirs. Because it would be very interesting to see what his perspective was. As you well know, no two people’s perspective is going to be the same. When Ben Jensen, who was one of the five shot on the House Floor at the Puerto Rican thing…And he came back, and I heard him telling some people how he was helped out this door. Except for one thing. I was there. He didn’t go out that door! {laughter}
JOHNSON:
But I’m sure that’s how he recalls it.
BARTLETT:
He recalled it. And, of course, he was shot at that point. He also would not have liked for me to tell the story about how he was shot. The bullet entered his right shoulder and, for some crazy reason, didn’t penetrate his carcass, but followed [20:00] under his skin and out the side. It didn’t really do a lot of damage; it just followed the course of his body, just under the skin. And he was never what you’d call “life-threatened” by the wound. But Ben Jensen was a dear friend, he was a part of the old poker group. We’ll talk about that another time. {laughter}
JOHNSON:
And I’m certainly going to ask you more questions about the ’54 shooting since you were an eyewitness.
BARTLETT:
Sure.
JOHNSON:
I just wanted to go back just a little bit more on the very historic days in December. December 11th, 1941, the declaration of war against Germany and Italy, Irving Swanson once again played an important role in the proceedings because he read President Roosevelt’s message asking for a declaration of war against Germany and Italy. Do you remember the events of this day, on December 11th? Jeannette Rankin also played a role, in that she voted present this time. But what are your recollections?
BARTLETT:
I have a less vivid memory of it. It’s not the declaration of war. But the resolution called it “A state of war exists.” I would need to refresh my own memory about some of that. Now that you mention it, I remember that she voted present subsequently, but…Well, those were momentous days, and so filled with stress, events, that some of it just gets lost, and as far as the particulars go. I don’t remember anything, off the top of my head, about that particular event, the next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And let’s see. You say that was Thursday? Was that the 11th?
JOHNSON:
The 11th.
BARTLETT:
My goodness. {laughter} It shows you how little I remember. I would have put those resolutions on Tuesday and Wednesday.
JOHNSON:
Well, you were very young at the time. {laughter}
BARTLETT:
Must not have been keeping very good track of the days of the week. And I haven’t gone back and read some of that, which I should have done—would have done if I hadn’t been so preoccupied.
JOHNSON:
One of the topics that you mentioned was security measures. And there’s very little documented on the security measures at the Capitol. So could you talk a little bit more about that, what happened afterwards? And then throughout the war. Were there more security measures that were implemented?
BARTLETT:
{laughter} Well, it’ll probably astound you to know how few. Now the soldiers put up a fence around the west lawn of the Capitol, put up their tents on the southwest lawn of the Capitol for a while. They maintained a perimeter guard, with their bayonets. They marched around the Capitol back there. The front plaza wasn’t guarded {laughter} very well. As a matter of fact, we had many demonstrations on the front plaza for the sale of bonds. We had, I can remember, Jack Benny and Dorothy Lamour and a group of them that came through there for a demonstration on the plaza out there, to help generate sale for bonds. At one [24:00] point, they brought a two-man Japanese submarine that they had captured and installed it out there right at the foot of the east steps. And they built some wooden stairs up, that you’d go up and look down inside. Well, I came to school, again at 6:00 in the morning, and this was a new installation. It had gone up overnight. I didn’t know it was there. And there was nobody around, nobody around. I walked over and climbed up those stairs {laughter} and looked down in there and screamed and jumped back off of that platform. I don’t remember whether I hit stairs or not. I just jumped off. They had a dummy Japanese in that darn thing! {laughter} I didn’t know.
JOHNSON:
Not what you expected to see.
BARTLETT:
Didn’t expect to see that. I’ve often said that, having gone through a couple wars with the security at the Capitol, I’m a little astounded at our obsession with security at this point. It’s not my responsibility, so I don’t know what’s required and what isn’t, but I think of how we confronted a couple of other serious world enemies without going into garrison government, and I just wonder how much of it has to be. But this is a new enemy and new method of bringing the war to our shores and to our Capitol, so maybe it’s necessary.
You know, after the Puerto Rican shooting, I would just inject the fact that there was a great hue and cry to put up bulletproof glass around the House Galleries. And Mr. Rayburn and Mr. Martin got together and said, “No, we’re not going to do that. We owe it to the people not to impose a barrier like that between them and their Representatives.” Which I thought was rather profound and rather, again, rising to an understanding of what should take place in a representative republic. And I wonder if there’s anybody around today with that perspective, who ask themselves—and maybe there is—but who ask themselves…Whenever people come in whose whole life has been one of providing security and that their form of security has always been, “The best way to provide security is to keep the people away.” Well, that doesn’t go for the United States Capitol. And I think that there needs to be somebody around to say, “Hey, this is where the people govern. And you’ve got to accommodate them as well as provide the security for the Members.”
But, you know, there’s no such thing as perfect security. President [Rafael] Trujillo spent more of his national budget—Dominican Republic—on personal security than any head of state we have ever known.37 The percentage that was to protect him was the biggest item in the budget. “National security,” he would have said. But, by golly, they shot him in office. And no schoolteacher goes to school any day without knowing that there’s danger there. No policeman takes his beat without knowing that there’s a danger there. So I don’t think that any public official should expect 100 percent personal security. I just think you’ve got to realize that if you choose to serve the public, that sometimes that public can turn on you! {laughter} So be it. I didn’t mean to get on my stump here. [28:00]
JOHNSON:
No, that’s fine. I have one final question. Did you have any role models during this period, when you were a Page, that may have inspired your long career on the Hill?
BARTLETT:
I had lots of wonderful role models. I’m glad you asked that question because I feel a great debt to any number of people. I started to mention William Tyler Page…any number of people who were. But I must tell you a little secret, a very personal one. I’ve always had tremendous support from my home folks, well, not just my family, but my neighbors and my home folks. They’ve always held me to a standard that [was] a little unreal. And yet, in each instance where I had a question of whether or not I should do something, I’ve had to remind myself, how’s this going to sound to the folks back home? And that’s not phony. Many, many a time I’ve thought, “I can’t let them down. I certainly can’t let my family down. Because they have…” I told you. I left the farm. And that left them short one hand to do things that I would otherwise do. So people were sacrificing for me. And, gosh, I don’t know whether in this day and age you dare mention it, but to this day I don’t go out to keep an engagement that I don’t repair to my faith to ask that I might be used, in that instance, to do something useful. And I try never to forget, when it’s over, if in fact things have gone well, to say thanks. But, you know, it’s sad that you don’t dare talk about that. Next question. {laughter}
JOHNSON:
I wanted to ask if there’s anything else you wanted to add for today. Anything else you wanted to add.
BARTLETT:
For today? You’ve gathered so many questions that were so pertinent to that period. I’ll probably think of things that might be useful to add to it. But I think that you’ve covered the war years, the early war years—the one we won, as Jim Corman used to say {laughter}, pretty well. And if I think of anything, I’m sure we can add it at the appropriate moment.
JOHNSON:
Exactly. Or bring it up for the next interview. All right. Thank you very much.

Footnotes

  1. For an example of the press coverage, see “Boy Patrolmen Welcomed for Safety Session,” 7 May 1938, Washington Post: X3.
  2. George M. Brase served in World War I with Congressman Wright Patman. Mr. Brase and his wife, Ethel, helped Joe Bartlett attain his first appointment as a Page. According to Bartlett, a temporary spot opened when House Page Bill Patman (son of Congressman Patman) left Washington, D.C., to spend a month in his home state of Texas.
  3. For information on Leonard F. Chapman, Jr., Commandant of the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, see Elizabeth Becker, “Gen. L. F. Chapman, 86, Dies; Former Marine Commandant,” 11 January 2000, New York Times: B9.
  4. After his tenure as a Representative, Trimble served as Clerk of the House from the 62nd through the 65th Congress (1911–1919) and from the 72nd Congress (1931–1933) until his death on November 23, 1946.
  5. Doorkeeper of the House from the 62nd to the 65th Congress (1911–1919) and from the 72nd Congress (1931–1933) until his death on January 27, 1943.
  6. For information on General Frederick Funston, see “Gen. Funston Dies Suddenly in Hotel,” 20 February 1917, New York Times: 1.
  7. For a detailed history of schooling for House Pages, see Bill Severn, Democracy’s Messengers: The Capitol Pages (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1975).
  8. Jim Oliver was a longtime employee in the Republican Cloakroom. For information on his career, see Congressional Record, House, 109th Cong., 2nd sess. (19 December 2007): 16899–16900.
  9. For additional information on Reverend Harris, see the Senate Historical Office’s Web page on Senate chaplains, http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Senate_Chaplain.htm.
  10. For more information on Speaker Sam Rayburn’s life, including his brief marriage and divorce, see D.B. Hardeman and Donald C. Bacon, Rayburn: A Biography (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1987); Anthony Champagne, “Rayburn, Sam,” American National Biography18 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999): 210–211.
  11. Served as Clerk of the House from the 81st through the 82nd Congress (1949–1953) and from the 84th through the 89th Congress (1955–1967). Roberts also served as Doorkeeper of the House during the 79th Congress (1945–1947).
  12. Served as Clerk of the House from the 66th through the 71st Congress (1919–1931). For more information on Page and “The American’s Creed,” see “Obligations of Americans Told in 100 Word Creed,” 4 April 1918, Chicago Daily Tribune: 1; “‘American’s Creed’ by Clerk of the House William Tyler Page,” Weekly Historical Highlights, Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/highlights.html?action=view&intID=275.
  13. Parliamentarian of the U.S. House of Representatives from the 70th Congress (1927–1929) until his retirement during the 93rd Congress (1973–1975) on June 27, 1974. For information on Lewis Deschler, see Richard L. Lyons, “Parliamentarian Lewis Deschler Dies,” 13 July 1976, Washington Post: C6.
  14. For information on the queen’s visit, see Robert C. Albright, “Standing on Floor Stained by Burning of 1814, British Rules Retake Capitol by Charm,” 10 June 1939, Washington Post: 2.
  15. To view an image of de Weldon’s statue of Rayburn, see the Architect of the Capitol’s Web page, http://www.aoc.gov/cc/cobs/rayburn_stat.cfm.
  16. Joe Bartlett later recalled that the reporter’s name was Cecil Dickson.
  17. Reference to the Republican Party losing the majority in the House to the Democrats for the 81st Congress (1949–1951). For a complete list of party divisions, see “Party Divisions of the House of Representatives (1789 to Present),” Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/house_history/partyDiv.html.
  18. For information on the 1954 shooting in the House Chamber, see “Four Puerto Rican Nationalists Opened Fire Onto the House Floor,” Weekly Historical Highlights, Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/highlights.html?action=view&intID=7.
  19. To read about Speaker Martin’s eyewitness account of the shooting, see Raymond Smock, “Speaker Joseph Martin’s Account of a Shooting on the Floor of the House,” Landmark Documents on the U.S. Congress (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1999): 413–415.
  20. Scant research has been devoted to the Little Congress, but the most comprehensive secondary source that includes information on the organization is Robert A. Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (New York: Vintage, 1990): 261–265.
  21. For more information on the history of the Capitol building, see the Architect of the Capitol’s Web page,http://www.aoc.gov/cc/capitol/capitol_construction.cfm.
  22. For historical background and a complete list of Joint Sessions, see “Joint Meetings, Joint Sessions, and Inaugurations,” Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/house_history/Joint_Meetings/index.html.
  23. For more information on Congresswoman Rankin, see Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, Women in Congress, 1917–2006 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006): 36–41 and http://womenincongress.house.gov.
  24. Fifty Representatives, including Rankin, voted against the war resolution in 1917.
  25. Listed in the 1941 Congressional Directory as the minority manager of telephones in the U.S. House of Representatives.
  26. Reference to Lincoln Memorial College of Harrogate, Tennessee.
  27. Before the opening of the Capitol Visitor Center in 2008, the United States Capitol Historical Society had a gift shop sales desk located in the crypt of the Capitol.
  28. Reference to the German Air Force.
  29. The local press covered the event and reported that Representative Harold Cooley of North Carolina climbed atop the Capitol and discovered the “decoy soldiers” and wooden guns. For information, see Robert De Vore, “Wooden Guns ‘Guard’ Capitol Against Air Raids, House Told,” 24 February 1943, Washington Post: 1.
  30. For information on former Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, see William L. O’Neill, “Knox, Frank,” American National Biography12 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999): 831–833.
  31. For information on Congresswomen Charlotte Reid and Shirley Pettis, see Office of History and Preservation, Women in Congress, 1917–2006: 416–419, 538–540 and http://womenincongress.house.gov.
  32. President Gerald Ford died on December 26, 2006; Charlotte Reid passed away on January 24, 2007.
  33. For information on Don McNeill’s radio program, see Lawrence Van Gelder, “Don McNeill, ‘Breakfast Club’ Host, Dies at 88,” 8 May 1996, New York Times: D21.
  34. Irving Swanson served as the House minority reading clerk from 1940 to 1943 and from 1945 to 1953. Mr. Swanson was interviewed by the Office of History and Preservation on July 27, 2004.
  35. For information on longtime reading clerk George Maurer, see “George J. Maurer Dies, Reading Clerk of the House,” 18 November 1962, Washington Post: B10.
  36. For information on Francis “Frank” Hoye, a longtime journal clerk for the House of Representatives, see “Francis P. Hoye, 67, House Journal Clerk,” 17 February 1979, Washington Post: B4.
  37. For information on the dictator Rafael Trujillo, see “Dominican Strongman Trujillo Slain,” 1 June 1961, Los Angeles Times: 1.