Audio

  • Capitol Page School

    Memories of the Capitol Page School during the 1940s.
    Interview recorded April 7, 2006 – View transcript

    Full Text: Capitol Page School

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    They were held down in what is I think now is the air conditioning room. It’s called the West Terrace, right close to where President Reagan established the way of 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’d probably lost it, like that. {laughter} But it was done right across the hall from Page School. And those whine of those generators was constant. They were big! And we met down there. It was a private school. 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 straight-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 completely uncommon to go in there and find that on the floor there was a puddle. And you had to put down planks so we could arrive at our seats. We’d walk in on the planks, take our seats, hold our feet up, and study Latin. It was something to have happen. And incidentally, one time a fellow switched on the light, and the light bulb—the light globe was full of water, and of course it went kapoop then. {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.

  • House Page Responsibilities

    Information on the duties and responsibilities of House Pages during the 1940s.
    Interview recorded April 7, 2006 – View transcript

    Full Text: House Page Responsibilities

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    In those days we worked a half a day Saturday every Saturday, and worked hard. Because that was the day we took 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 locker boxes. And we put them in there in order by date so that we could…As Members would call up regularly. “I need a copy—I need ten 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 when 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.

  • Pages on the House Floor

    Description of the responsibilities of Pages assigned to the House Floor during the 1940s and 1950s.
    Interview recorded May 17, 2006 – View transcript

    Full Text: Pages on the House Floor

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    Most people, I think, know, that there’s a Page calling system on the floor. It was all electronically. It’s been upgraded. They have a much better system there, now. But it has a diagram of the floor. And when a bell or a sign would light up, you could tell the Page taking his little card that has the diagram, he could go directly to that seat, without any trouble. And that’s your number one priority. At least it was when I was Chief Page. Your number one priority is to respond to the calls on the floor. And that would involve a lot of things. But that—the direct service to the Members of Congress, that was put above everything else. Concurrent with that, we would get phone calls coming into the cloakroom, wanting documents from the old document room, and things of that nature. That was the second priority. And we would dispatch them from that location. In our instance, it was the Northwest corner of the House Floor. We had two benches without cushions. And we would try to maintain a few boys on those benches. We’d sometimes have eight or 10 sitting there, waiting for their next assignment. But most of the time, we were lucky to have two or three there, waiting to take care of the House Floor, if it was a busy time of day, a busy legislative situation.

  • Patronage in the U.S. House

    Background on House patronage and appointments during the 1940s and 1950s.
    Interview recorded April 7, 2006 – View transcript

    Full Text: Patronage in the U.S. House

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    BARTLETT:
    Well, at the end of the 30 days it was coming to Labor Day, and it was a weekend, and they were taking the weekend off. And as I went back, I just went to say goodbye to the people who had been kind to me. I went to South Trimble, who was the Clerk of the House, and thanked him. He was a fine old grandfatherly gentleman. And he said... 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. Well…“All right, sir.” And then I went down to say goodbye to Joe Sinnott, who was the Doorkeeper of the House, who had charge of the Pages. And he was a man very much feared on Capitol Hill. He was as gruff old curmudgeon as you could get. I liked him! So we hit it off. And after a short conversation he used exactly the same words that South Trimble said, “Stick around.” Again, that doesn’t mean much. 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 anybody—anybody’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 I was on it. They just…And then I was a hustler. I was a farm boy. I didn’t know what it was not to 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 did—I was used as Page Overseer, which is nothing more than the senior Page, a senior Page, or someone they designate. And those were interesting years.

Video

  • “The Clinic”

    Description of Indiana Congressman Charlie Halleck’s office space, “The Clinic.”
    Interview recorded October 12, 2006 – Deed of Gift

  • Competition for House Reading Clerk

    Personal account of the competition which took place for House Reading Clerk in 1953.
    Interview recorded October 12, 2006 – Deed of Gift

  • The House Assembles in the Ways and Means Committee Room

    Recollections of the 81st Congress (1949–1951) which met in the House Ways and Means Committee Room.
    Interview recorded October 12, 2006 – Deed of Gift

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