Transcripts

Interview 1 – August 24, 2005

Johnson:
This is Kathleen Johnson interviewing Benjamin C. West, former superintendent of the House Press Gallery.1 It’s August 24th [2005], and this interview is taking place in the Legislative Resource Center conference room, Cannon House Office Building. Mr. West, I was hoping we could start with some biographical information. When and where were you born?
West:
I was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, as a result of my parents’ being on Christmas holiday. Otherwise, I was a Washingtonian and would have been a native Washingtonian. I was born December 27th, 1926. I had the bad grace to show up eight days earlier over predictions. My parents were married four years earlier and were residents of Washington, D.C., and as a result of that, until I was married in 1946, I lived essentially within the shadow of the Capitol dome—4th and A Northeast, 7th and A Northeast, and the 1300 block of North Carolina Avenue. So, much of my young life was spent within the shadow of the dome. I also served newspapers—the old Washington Times Herald—for two and a half years: 4:30 in the morning and 3:30 in the afternoon. And, indeed, my route went right up to the back door of the Supreme Court building and still within the shadow of the dome.
Johnson:
How old were you at that time?
West:
I was 14, not quite 15. I had it about two and a half years. And as a family note, I had the rather unusual childhood role of being the family breadwinner. That was our income during the Great Depression, as it was called. Twenty-eight percent of the workforce was unemployed, and another 20 percent was underemployed. So a paper route…even adults, in some cases, were utilizing that income opportunity. I came to the Capitol building at age 15, I was a little over 15. My initial employment was 90 days as an electrician’s helper in the Capitol basement on the Architect’s office payroll. The then-building superintendent, Mr. Augustus Cook, took a liking to me, and when that patronage appointment expired, he arranged for a four-month appointment to operate the Senators’ elevator at the Senate door on the other side of the building. And from there I went to the press gallery and stayed 44 years.
Johnson:
So when you first arrived at the press gallery, what was your job? What was your position?
West:
At that time, the staff was only four members. And my title, which essentially was a historic title, was messenger to the press gallery. The other three jobs were superintendent and first assistant and second assistant. And if you examine the Congressional Directories from 1942 to 1948, you will not find me listed. Nor [4:00] would you find the equivalent job in the Senate Press Gallery listed. It was the custom then that only the assistants were listed in the Congressional Directories, as part of the press gallery staffs. In 1948 a fifth position was created, actually as a promotion for me, and carried the title of third assistant superintendent. Also, the title of “messenger” was eliminated. And interestingly, over the many years, the bottom staff position at one time was—I found in an old journal—described as messenger to the press gallery, which kind of was ongoing, even when I joined it. But in another document I once saw, it was listed as Page to the press gallery. So apparently there were some assorted titles over the span of time. Apparently, the original staffing of the press gallery took place sometime in the early 1870s. The first superintendent, Mr. Charles H. Mann, he served from 1879 to 1913. And, as far as I ever encountered, he was the only staffer up until about the last year of his tenure. And my first boss, Mr. William J. Donaldson, Jr., was his Page to the press gallery. And that appears to be the first additional staffer to the press gallery that I’ve ever come across. In some conversations with Mr. Donaldson as his now assistant, he indicated it was a two-man staff for a number of years during his early tenure. He served from 1913 to 1960. I would have to add an asterisk to that because in 1960 he was asked to retire, and Speaker [Samuel] Rayburn, who was very fond of Mr. Donaldson, said no, that he would retire from the position of superintendent, and a position of special assistant to the superintendent was created at the same salary for Mr. Donaldson. So he served another 10 years in that capacity.
When I became superintendent in January of 1969, that post had become controversial with a couple of Members of the House. Wayne Hays of the House Administration Committee was one. And Sam Devine, his Republican counterpart, was another. Their main complaint was that Mr. Donaldson had only been in the office one time in the 10 years that he had that title. And I made no defense of it, beyond the fact that it was Speaker Rayburn’s wishes that Mr. Donaldson have that position during his lifetime. But I could not quarrel with the premise that it couldn’t be justified any further. And so through his son, Mr. [8:00] Donaldson was asked to retire, which he did quite willingly. So he technically served from 1913 to 1970 on the active payroll. But the last 10 years he was inactive to be sure.
Johnson:
And he was a Page before he worked in the press gallery.
West:
I notice you listed that. And he is the only Page that I’m aware of, either in the Senate Press Gallery or the House Press Gallery, that originally started as a Page. Now Mr. Donaldson was not the most communicative fellow that I ever met. But he did mention that he was reassigned from the floor to the press gallery because there was a rather rigid rule—I don’t know if it was a rule of Speaker Joe Cannon or what—but if Pages got so tall, out they went, see.
Johnson:
Oh.
West:
So, and Mr. Donaldson, incidentally, was not a very tall individual. He only came up to about here on me.
Johnson:
So he wasn’t as tall as you were.
West:
No. But apparently in those days if you got over about five foot, essentially that was it. Your career ended right there {laughter}, unceremoniously, no doubt. There were three Pages that found their way to careers, however, Mr. Donaldson being one of them. The clerk of the House Rules Committee when I joined the press gallery was a gentleman of the name Humphrey “Scottie” Shaw, and he was a fellow Page with Mr. Donaldson in 1912 during the last—I think that was the last year of Speaker “Uncle Joe” Cannon.2 And also there was kind of a triumvirate. James P. Griffin, a fellow Page, spent some 45 years as a legislative floor employee, most of it in a position then called minority pair clerk.
In the earlier years of my tenure, there was a majority pair clerk and a minority pair clerk, and the device was if a Member knew he would be absent on a particular vote, he would seek out the pair clerk and say, “Pair me voting “aye’ for this,” and then, of course, the pair clerk would be obliged to find a negative vote to pair him with, and at the conclusion of the roll call, the pairs are read: “Mr. Smith, for; Mr. Jones, against.” And sometimes it would be a page-long list. Jimmy was an habitué of the press gallery and a frequent participant in our almost daily poker games. Those three started out as Page boys in 1912 and continued their careers. Scottie Shaw was clerk of the Rules Committee for many years, up until the 80th Congress and the Republicans took over. And then, I believe, he stayed as a Minority Clerk as well. But the chairman, Adolph Sabath, from Chicago, was a Member of the House for 46 years. So Mr. Shaw almost had a guaranteed employment. And not just the fabled stories of Chicago politics, but the machine kind of kept you. As long as you had their blessing, you really had a [12:00] lifetime tenure in the House, as Mr. Sabath enjoyed and many others in the Illinois delegation [enjoyed] over the years. And so as a consequence, why, Scottie Shaw, a former Page, had a longtime career with the House of Representatives.
And so, continuing kind of the sequence of the superintendents, Mr. Mann served from 1879 to 1913; Mr. Donaldson, from 1913 to 1960 as superintendent; and Mr. Embly, from 1960 to January 1 of 1969. And then myself from January 1969 to April 1986, roughly about 18 years. Mr. Embly was not a Page boy. He was the Western Union messenger assigned to the House Press Gallery. And his job as a uniformed messenger, was if a reporter was typing in one of the rooms, he’d say “copy,” and the field was very competitive, however, because there was also Postal Telegraph. They also had a messenger stationed in the press gallery, both on the Senate side and the House side. And a reporter would say “Copy, Western.” And Dick would grab the copy and take it back to the west room. And the west room was devoted entirely to telegraph companies until about the middle ’50s. So Embly started as a Western Union messenger, and on the Senate side, Herbert Hall, who was in the fourth position over there, also was a Western Union messenger. So two of the press gallery staffers came, in effect, from industry outside, just there in the right place at the right time. And of course they knew all the reporters, which is useful when you’re hiring someone.
Johnson:
I wanted to step back a little bit. Can you describe an average day in the press gallery. What sorts of things happened there?
West:
Well, it couldn’t be condensed to a single thought or sentence, but the press gallery that I joined in 1942—well, to be honest about it—was a very squalid facility. I can remember if you came in after dark for some reason or another, you unlocked either the east door or the west door and you reached in, turned the lights on, so all of the mice and cockroaches could flee to their lair, literally. You stood there for a moment and allowed the floor to clear. And if you came in from either the west end of the facility or the east door, it was a solid blue haze of cigarette smoke, tobacco smoke. There was only one single ventilation withdrawal unit in the press gallery to service the—well, the Architect describes them as five rooms. And, actually, the fifth room is just a small connecting [16:00] enclave with a men’s room and a ladies’ room. But they describe it as a room. And even in 1942, the press gallery was only about 60 percent suitable for the need, because initially when the south wing was constructed, it was meant to be the southern corridor for the House Chamber.
The cockroaches were everywhere. If you opened a desk drawer they would scatter. If you opened a file cabinet, the same. And there was only a reflected two incandescent lights going up into the ceilings, and the lighting was quite inadequate. The noise level was deafening. In fact, my daughter asked me here recently if my early years in the press gallery could possibly have contributed to my diminution of hearing. And it possibly could, because the telegraph companies in those days, they operated—well, they used to call them “bugs.” It was Morse code. And there was a sounder on the ledge of their enclosure which they received by. But they were quite loud.
And then there was a teletype system in both Postal and Western Union that created a tape about an inch wide, and essentially it was a Braille, that if they needed to find a telegram from two hours earlier or something, they’d just run the tape and it would reappear. And, indeed, the wire services also had essentially the same equipment [but] much larger. And they were punching tape with every word they dispatched to their office downtown. So the decibel level was just overwhelming, and there was no treatment on the walls; they were just painted plaster walls. And I’ll get into it later, when I did a total remodeling of the press gallery in the ’60s.
But, so in the overall, it was a very squalid place. Cigarette butts all over the landscape. I don’t recall seeing a single ashtray {laughter}, and we had cuspidors in each room because there were some chewing-tobacco users. Our old janitor, while he was on the architect’s payroll historically, even in my tenure, he was permanently assigned to the press gallery full-time. And he took pride in those brass cuspidors. They sparkled all the time. He never would tell us his age. His name was Robert Boston. I’ll always remember it. And he was a very fine gentleman. And he was also very devoted. Eight o’clock at night, despite having arrived at 4:30 to 5:00 in the morning, he’d be over in the back row of the east part of the chamber, waiting for the House to adjourn. He wouldn’t leave for home until the House adjourned. So it was not uncommon to see Mr. Boston in the back row of the gallery over there just, in effect, killing time. And he probably was secretly an expert on the House of Representatives by now. {laughter}
In the overall, it was a really squalid, inadequate facility. There was no [20:00] communication system. You manually answered each telephone. There were 10 telephone booths on the north wall of the press gallery. And there was no linkage. There was a separate number for each one. You got up from your chair and walked to the booth, answered the phone, laid it on the ledge, and walked from one end of the press gallery to the other: “Call for Kathleen Johnson, call for Ben West.” And if the House was in session, you went in the chamber and looked to see if that reporter was in the chamber. So it was a very laborious day if you do that 100, a couple hundred times a day.
Johnson:
Was that one of your assignments as a messenger?
West:
Yes, as did the other staffers to a lesser degree. Well, in 1967, I went to Mr. Embly and told him of an emerging idea I had been working on. I’m a self-taught draftsman and also a fair illustrator. And I told him, “We’re working in chaos here.” We did have a five-button phone set on the staff desk by then, but we only had one staff desk. And we did have a very primitive PA system by about 1958 or ’59 that was put in. But there were wires everywhere. If you sat down at a typewriter in the public areas, the floor would look like this mass of wires right here. And you would disentangle your feet to get up and, in effect, extricate yourself. So I went to Dick one day, and I said, “I have a master plan.” And I had some sketches made that I had done at home. And he looked them over. “Well,” he says, “I like this.” But Mr. Embly was not [one of] the most energetic people you’ve met. He said, “I’ll bless this, but I’ll have nothing to do with it.” He says, “You’re on your own.” But he added, “To whatever tribunal necessary, I will state it has my blessings, and you are the authority on this, and you are in charge of the undertaking.”
Johnson:
At this time you were an assistant superintendent?
West:
I was his deputy then. And I’ll say at this point that I was very loyal to Mr. Embly, as was Tony Demma to Mr. Donaldson—and Tony’s predecessor, Chester Thrift, who was there only about a year and a half of my early career and died of a stroke one morning. And I was very loyal to Mr. Embly. (In the latter years of my tenure, I did not enjoy that luxury—without further elaboration. But I did not know that luxury.)
So in the nine years that Mr. Embly was superintendent, I think only twice we had a quarrel or a difference of opinion. But he relied on me quite extensively. I think I wrote everything that Mr. Embly ever put his signature to. And sometimes if the [24:00] Standing Committee of Correspondents would assign him a project that he wasn’t comfortable with, I would assist or sometimes do it in his behalf, and then he would sign under his name. And no one was the wiser. So the remodeling is really a separate topic I’d like to set aside for a minute or two…
Johnson:
That’s fine.
West:
…and kind of continue the sort of the evolving of the superintendents. So among your various topics that you’ve set forth here in this memorandum, you ask at one point the relationship between the Senate Press Gallery staffs and the House Press Gallery staffs. It was well integrated, and somewhat dependent on the other, because obviously you’re dealing with a common product: legislation, same reporters. Although in later years, bureaus tended to assign exclusively to one gallery or another. Although, on occasion, if you needed the manpower you’d double up and cover both galleries. But, and work from both galleries.
The Senate Press Gallery, one, had a larger staff as a result of a Sergeant at Arms’ placing an appointee into that staff operation. Unlike the House of Representatives, where the superintendent and the Standing Committee of Correspondents is responsible to the Speaker of the House, on the Senate side, it is the Senate Sergeant at Arms and, ultimately, the Rules and Administration Committee that they are accountable to. And I personally thought it was wrong that such an appointee be placed into what basically was an autonomous, apolitical operation. But that opinion wasn’t shared on the other side, and I was not superintendent at the time. And a time or two, I was thrust into circumstances where I was sort of speaking as superintendent.
In the last four, approximately four, years of Mr. Embly’s tenure, he started commuting to his farm up in Cecil County, Maryland. Actually, it belonged to his wife. They had no children, and they were intensely devoted to one another. And they traveled the world. That was their one project per annum. And so Dick started commuting, which meant that he would leave about 3:15 in the afternoon to catch his 4:00 train, and he didn’t arrive until about 10:30, getting off of his morning train. So for roughly four years I was acting superintendent much of the time, and as a consequence I found myself a time or two in circumstances where I was sort of presumptuous, perhaps, but as the deputy, that was my role: to fill the gap. And so, I think, technically, I would fancy myself as superintendent for about 22 years.
Johnson:
Okay. What were your responsibilities as superintendent? What did the job entail?
West:
Well, they were extensive. But, now, it depends on the quality of superintendent [28:00] you wish to be.
Johnson:
Well, what about for you, specifically?
West:
Well, now Mr. Donaldson, I knew many of the old reporters in my early tenure who grew up in Mr. Donaldson’s “dynasty,” if you will. And I never heard anything but compliments about him. And he was an energetic fellow. He was not an innovative fellow. Now, I turned out to be an innovative superintendent. But Mr. Donaldson was a workhorse in his time. And you must realize, too, that in the pinnacle of his career, it was the Great Depression era and, in 1937, Congress passed what was called the Economy Act of 1937, and everyone in government, including Members of the House and Senate, took a 25 percent pay cut. So Mr. Donaldson, with a young family and so forth…and the press gallery by comparison to other offices was not well paid, which I will elaborate on a little bit later, and so he did what was needed at the time.
And one of my favorite stories of Mr. Donaldson, his nickname was “Raskob,” R-A-S-K-O-B—and I asked him a time or two, because these old reporters had been there in the ’20s and the ’30s, and now into the ’40s, and sort of in the twilight of their careers, but he never would explain the occasional nickname “Raskob.” So one day, I believe it was Bill Flythe of the old Hearst newspapers, came in one morning and said, “Hi you, “Raskob,’” and Mr. Donaldson kind of turned and walked away. I said, “Mr. Flythe, where does “Raskob’ come from?” And so he tells me this story that it originated at the 1924 presidential nominating convention. The then-Republican chairman was a multimillionaire by the name of John J. Raskob. And it seems during the convention period, Mr. Donaldson and a number of his cronies went to a very famous restaurant, and apparently the national—it was frequented by national committee officials and so forth—and Mr. Raskob was there that evening, as it turned out. So Mr. Donaldson and the several reporters had themselves a raucous evening, and when the check came, they found themselves somewhat impoverished and unable to meet this sum. So Mr. Donaldson is reputed to have taken the check, wrote: “Okay. Raskob.”
Johnson:
Oh. Very clever.
West:
And handed it back to the waiter with a generous tip. And from that day forward, according to Mr. Flythe, it was: “Okay. “Raskob.’” So that’s how he drew his name. But Mr. Donaldson in his latter years was kind of coasting, if you will. When I joined in 1942, he’s already a 30-year man, and I remember on his 35th anniversary, which would have been 1948, Speaker Rayburn came into our main [32:00] room, the general room, with a photographer and summoned Mr. Donaldson and congratulated him on 35 years of service in the press gallery. And it was a devoted service, I would describe it, from the hearsay of yesteryear from the old inhabitants around there who kind of grew up with him, so to speak. And so Speaker Rayburn congratulated him. And again, later in 1948, the National Press Club threw a big gala called “Bill Donaldson Night,” in which they gave him one of the first television sets in Washington. And the Speaker was there, Minority Leader Joe Martin was there, I was there, and hundreds of reporters. So he was well respected in the newspaper community. He was a name. He was a symbol.
But in his latter years he got to spending maybe an hour or two a day at the office. And I don’t know of anyone who begrudged him that opportunity. But it did create a problem or two in that it sort of stymied everyone in rank and, plus, you were operating a man short all the time because the deputy was basically serving as the superintendent almost full-time. So it did have its interoffice disappointments, I’ll say. And in fact, ultimately, as I mentioned earlier, it led to the committee inviting him to retire, and Mr. Rayburn intervened and made another—an alternative—arrangement.
Johnson:
You mentioned a couple of times the Standing Committee of Correspondents. Can you explain who they were and what they did?
West:
Well, I think this would be a good point to go back to the origin of the press gallery. In 1857, the House of Representatives adjourned for the final time in Statuary Hall and relocated to what was then described as the south wing, not as the House Chamber or House wing.3 And in the course of the first several sessions, perhaps the Opening Day—that’s unclear, at least I’ve never found it, and I’ve talked to my longtime good friend Bill Brown, the House Parliamentarian, and he had never unearthed anything to the contrary—but in 1857, a gentleman from Arkansas—and I am embarrassed I no longer remember his name, I did know it once—a gentleman from Arkansas was recognized to offer what in effect was a housekeeping resolution.4
And a part of that resolution stated that that portion on the third level behind the central motive, which we now call the Speaker’s Rostrum today, would be set aside for reporters—letter writers—and be furnished with papers, bills, supplies, and telegraphic services. And it was approved. And so for approximately 15 to 17 [36:00] years—and that’s more speculation than accuracy, but it’s close to the mark—that area was unsupervised, unattended, no credentialing system in place. A group of reporters assembled one day and appealed to the incumbent Speaker that the area reserved to the press was overwhelmed with claim agents, lobbyists, petitioners, and pickwomen. And so they went to the Speaker then, and I could only speculate on his name, but I think it would be roughly about 15 to 17 years from 1857.
Johnson:
It was 1879 when they first formed.
West:
Well, that is the first record of staff, is 1879, see, but somewhere around ’70, ’72, somewhere in there, I think. And so they appealed to the Speaker to deliver them from this chaos and overwhelming population. And he responded by—and it’s unclear exactly the precise mechanism employed—but it created what was the forerunner of the Standing Committee of Correspondents, which would be the governing body of the press gallery, including accreditation to weed out the undeserving and the pretenders, if you will, the journalistic pretenders.5
And the first evidence that I ever ran across—the introduction of staff—was with Mr. Charles Mann, the first superintendent, in 1879. Now there was prior to that a Page to the press gallery, [a position] which Mr. Donaldson held for slightly over a year. And prior to that a time or two—looking at old payroll ledgers one time, there was an item described as “messenger to the press.” It didn’t say “press gallery.” So it was never clear if that was an assigned staffer or if a Member just wanted him to take a note up to the reporter and then come back down and take his seat on the floor or something like that. So it was never clear.
But the genesis of the Standing Committee of Correspondents is roughly in the 1872 to 1875 range, in there somewhere. And that mechanism was put into place. And the subsequent appointment of staff apparently was rather erratic, if at all, until 1879. And Mr. Donaldson shows up as a Page, transferred to the press gallery a little less than a year and a half prior to Mr. Mann’s departure. And I’m unsure if Mr. Mann died on the job or perhaps died at home or something. As I say, Mr. Donaldson was not all that communicative. And he was a treasure-trove, well, possibly a tinge like me as well—someone comes up years later and they’re suddenly interested in closing a gap. But I never was that successful with Mr. Donaldson. I did learn many things from him. But the continuity of [40:00] superintendents on both sides is now a matter of, obviously, official records. I was the fourth superintendent in [the] history of the press gallery, and I noticed another category you listed was the various positions and rank that I held in the press gallery. I’m the only one in history who served all five ranks in the press gallery staff. I never found any other payroll or any listing disputing that.
Johnson:
What are the five ranks?
West:
We were a five-man staff, and I served in all five positions: messenger, 1942–1948; third assistant superintendent, 1948–1958; second assistant superintendent, 1958–1960; first assistant superintendent, 1960–1969; superintendent, 1969–1986.
Johnson:
You began as a messenger.
West:
I started off as messenger for the first six years, and then in 1948 in the 80th Congress, the Standing Committee petitioned for another staffer because the press gallery when I joined…the war was barely six months old. And the press gallery membership at that time was about 550 to about 600. When I retired, it was slightly in excess of 1,500, in 1986. And so by the end of the war, a new government is in place, so to speak. Prior to World War II, there weren’t all these government agencies. As a Member of the House of Representatives once said on the House Floor—I was present when he said it—“There’s nothing more permanent in Washington than a temporary bureau.” And goodness knows, that’s very prophetic.
And so, as government expanded, Washington coverage expanded. And of course an obvious population growth. Our work indeed was increasing meaningfully. So in the 80th Congress we ran into some opposition—not so much on the need—but in the 80th Congress the slogan was, “sine die by July.”6 Well, and indeed, we did in 1948. And Mr. Truman had the bad taste to call us back in special session later that month. But that was the slogan in the House: “Sine die by Fourth of July.” And so given that fact, the House Administration Committee—actually, it was the old Accounts Committee then. And no, I’m mistaken, the Accounts Committee had been merged into [the] House Administration Committee. They were troubled by the roughly five-month shutdown of Congress. Indeed, I can remember in ’47 we closed the House Press Gallery and adjourned and operated out of the Senate Press Gallery. Just that one year. But apparently that had been the custom before the war, to close one gallery. I ran across something about Chester A. Thrift, who was the first assistant when [44:00] I joined the staff. His obituary listed him sort of concurrently as an employee of the Commerce Department.
I asked Mr. Donaldson about that one day, and he said [due to] the Economy Act of 1937, when Congress adjourned, many people went off the payroll for the balance of the year. So Chester had found employment downtown as a temporary aide—I never knew the category or designation of his other employment. That ended, of course, with World War II. So the superintendent’s tenure from 1879 through today has remained uninterrupted. It’s an ongoing office. And it’s subject to appointment by the Standing Committee of Correspondents, by and with the approval of the Speaker.
Johnson:
The Standing Committee of Correspondents are reporters who are elected for this body?
West:
They are reporters. They are reporters elected from the accredited membership, and they serve for two years. The way that it worked numerically is, if you led the ticket the year you ran for office, you served as a member that year, but then the next year you were automatically chairman. Now there was a vote, and I can only remember one departure from that practice. And that was the gentleman [who] didn’t want the full responsibility of being chairman, so we had co-chairmen that year. And thankfully never again. Just not administratively functional. But, so the membership of the Standing Committee of Correspondents is drawn from the overall membership—accredited membership of the press galleries…of the daily newspaper press galleries.
Johnson:
Right.
West:
And they serve two years. And it’s a bit of a prestige post. It’s something of a vote of your peers if you succeed in your bid for election. And it’s almost like appointing a fellow to the Supreme Court. I remember reading in the memoir of Mr. President [Dwight D.] Eisenhower; [he was] expressing his disappointment in his Earl Warren appointment. In fact, he described it as [the] “worst mistake I ever made.” Well, on occasion, the electorate in the galleries found their newly elected member something of a political chameleon. He was doing other things than what they thought he had promised or had advocated.
But that wasn’t rampant, but it did happen now and again. I remember in one case one reporter who was elected to the Standing Committee [of Correspondents], and he was assigned to the House side regularly, and he said, “I’ve been watching, and you’re one of the real workhorses around here. And you do your homework.” And he says, “I’m going to see that you get a pay raise.” Well, after he got onto the Standing Committee and he got a look at the payroll, I had to struggle to hold [48:00] on to what I had. I say that in jest.
Johnson:
So you didn’t receive that promised raise.
West:
Yeah, no raise. So one had to be a little cautious in the membership-elect. But it is a responsible position. My credentials as a sought-after staffer to join the House Press Gallery were twofold. One, I was a speedy touch-typist, there not being one on either House or Senate staff; and two, it would be about two years, four months before I was subject to the draft. Those were my outstanding qualities. But I was scrub-faced, and my hair was combed. That was about it. And so as a consequence of that skill, many times I found myself being borrowed from the House Press Gallery over to work in the Senate Press Gallery office for the superintendent Harold R. Beckley. The 1944 presidential nomination conventions were approaching and I practically lived in the Senate Press Gallery for six months. Also, I found myself basically the clerk to the Standing Committee. Now in latter years, back in 1954, they hired someone with the designation “secretary” who took over all of those duties. So as a result of my typing skills, I spent many, many hours, many days, over in the Senate as a borrowed staffer from the House side.
Johnson:
Did that relationship continue, the good relationship between the House and the Senate press galleries?
West:
Well, it was a part of it. I do know at one point—I couldn’t help but overhear Mr. Donaldson grousing about the frequency of my absences. And I think he was complaining to a member of the Standing Committee. I’m not sure about that. But I did overhear him grousing about the frequency of my absences. But the sheer fact of the matter was that I could turn out ten times the work of a two-fingered, four-fingered typist on the Senate staff. It was just a matter of good logistics. And I kind of enjoyed the work as well. In fact, it gave me a tremendous background for a very young staffer. I learned the inner workings of the Committee, the Standing Committee, some of its politics, and there were inner politics. And I enjoyed a very retentive memory. I believe that exposure enabled me to be a first-class superintendent in future years.
Johnson:
Can you provide an example? What exactly—what were you typing? What was your work?
West:
Oh my goodness. Well, for example, in preparing for a convention—and it’s far more extensive, far more elaborate in latter years than it was then—for example, security, there was a war on, and the President of the United States was going to be in the Chicago Amphitheater for his fourth term, and obviously a fourth term is [52:00] a most newsworthy historical event. So the demand for space and accreditation was immense. I think I attended only one meeting with the superintendent at a national committee office downtown. I think only once. But the arrangements are discussed. Will the press platform be on each side of the rostrum in Convention Hall? How many seats will there be on each wing? Where will the workrooms and workspaces be? What is the travel time from the rostrum side to the workspace area? Particularly as the evening unfolds and you have A.M. papers with deadlines to meet. So these were all crucial questions. And so a lot of times I’d just be typing up a memorandum for the superintendent, outlining all these various questions. Or, like myself at the moment, he would just be talking out loud and I would be typing five- or six-word sentences just to capture his thoughts, and he’d fold it up, stick it in his pocket, take it with him.
Then you would officially create a notice to send on the wires nationwide. Nineteen forty-four, that would have been United Press, International News Service, and Associated Press. And you invite them to write you telling how much space they wish—which generally only the Washington bureaus responded to the space request. Now, in latter times, much more of that was taken over by the home office because it became so complicated and very complex. Then you would await the response from your wire-service invitations. The letters would come in by the hundreds. And you would have to physically open them and read each one. You start categorizing them. You start making a master list, alphabetically. Ultimately, you have to make a list cross-referencing it, because if someone walked up to you and said, “Where is the Chicago Tribune located?” you would look up Chicago Tribune and it would say Section 1, Row B, Seats 1–10. Or if a security man came up and he asks, “Who’s that sitting in Seat 1 A–10?” then you’d have to have your other index to go down that would say Chicago Tribune.
Johnson:
You had to be incredibly organized.
West:
Right. So you had to reverse them. And it was quite essential in those days, because covering conventions in that era—and I attended them from 1944 to 1980, and that’s another topic area I wish to get into with you because there is some considerable historical factor involved in that—so you have this immense paper volume and I would have help from a couple of staffers, even though they’re [typing] only two fingers at a time. But at least they’re typing envelopes for me. I would type the original letter and hand it to that one, and of course the address would be on it, and he or she would copy it onto the envelope. And we would [56:00] send out probably, eventually, about in that period of time about 800 replies in ’44 and ’48. Would be about 1,200 reporters that were officially accredited to each event.
Johnson:
Okay. This was for both party conventions, Republicans and Democrats?
West:
And this would be both party conventions. And I learned, I think from Mr. Donaldson, that the genesis for this began in 1904 with the Democratic National Committee petitioning the Standing Committee of Correspondents to take over the accrediting role and the on-site management. And, I think, clearly—obviously I wasn’t there at the time—but I think the national committee was trying to divest itself of a very unpleasant task.
Johnson:
And time-consuming.
West:
They weren’t satisfying anyone. They were alienating far more than they were satisfying. And then, in 1912, the Republican National Committee made a similar request of us, “us” being the Standing Committee. And, when I say Standing Committee, I refer to the Standing Committee of Correspondents of the daily- newspaper press galleries. So, 1912, we inherited the responsibility of both. (With regard to that date it has been my long belief—perhaps from Mr. Donaldson—that the Democrats made the initial request. However, in his paper on the Standing Committee, Professor Marbut lists them in reverse order.) And that went unchallenged until 1980. And I’d kind of like to set that aside at this point and get back to it.
Johnson:
Sure.
West:
Once the mail-out and response to the convention credentialing requests, then you get into the local workspace factor, which you have negotiated with the two national committees beforehand. But you have to have some link and communication with the various companies—Western Union, Postal Telegraph, ITT, ATT, anything that moves press copy from the convention site to a home office. And we would reserve places for on-site Western Union telegraphers in the back row of our daily press section. So that an independent reporter who may be just one fellow representing his hometown paper could walk to the back row, and there would be a messenger, and the messenger would take that copy and race it to the workspace, wherever Western Union or Postal was set up. And if it was urgent, there was usually three Western Union telegraphers and Postal telegraphers there sending it by Morse code.
Johnson:
How long were the telegraphers there in the press gallery?
West:
The telegraph companies? The best that I could establish was, apparently, very much after the press gallery section was set aside, because the original resolution spoke of telegraph services. Now whether that meant somebody hauling it off to a building downtown or—but the most people that I’ve talked to, actually a limited few, they interpret that as meaning on-site telegraphic capability. And in my very [60:00] early press gallery years, it was a flourishing enterprise in both galleries. As I mentioned earlier, I believe, it contributed mightily to the decibel level in the press gallery rooms. My goodness, you ought to wear earmuffs or something. So in 19—I think 1948, Postal Telegraph merged with Western Union and went out of business. And the space being vacated in the west room of the press gallery was then turned over and occupied by a new service the Associated Press was establishing called the “Regional Service.” And in most cases they were homegrown reporters who came to Washington. And I think initially there was 21 of them. Three or four of them were on the desk downtown in the old Washington Star building. In my early press gallery years, the Associated Press was on the second floor of the old Washington Star building at 11th and Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest. And that little enclave in the west room was given to the Associated Press for their regional reporters. And they had, in effect, set it up by region. Now, a handful—Pennsylvania, for example, one man covered Pennsylvania. New York, one man covered New York. But then in the case of, well, say, Oregon, Washington, Alaska…one man covered those. And in some of the midwestern states, one AP reporter would cover six states. It was based basically on population. And so, that Postal Telegraph space in the press gallery was absorbed by the AP regional service. And United Press did not attempt to imitate that or to match it. They did years later. And, in fact, it became a part of the remodeling problem for me. But not in the large scale that the Associated Press had introduced it.
So the Postal entry on both sides went out about 1948. And the Postal had a big triangular glass globe that sat on about a four-and-a-half-foot-high wall that enclosed their office. And right on the corner of it was this triangular, lighted—I remember Mr. Wallace (his nickname was Wally), who was a manager, he would come in the first thing in the morning, he’d hit the little pull-chain and the light would come on, and Postal Telegraph would be illuminated all over the room. Well, not surprisingly and shortly thereafter, not to be outdone, the Western Union, they put one up with a pull-chain. So the west room was aglow with commercial announcement and invitation {laughter}. Mr. Wallace was the head of that. And then after he left, a gentleman by the name of Joseph Berlinsky was the last manager of the postal service in the—Postal Telegraph service—in the press gallery. And [at] the Western Union, his counterpart was James O. Mathis, [64:00] who I was particularly friendly with. We became rather good friends. Western Union stayed on my side until about 1960—about 1970. And by then, a program I had introduced—I mentioned earlier that I was the energetic superintendent, so there’s going to be a number of programs that I’m going to mention to you that I introduced in the gallery. But the telecopier system was now popular in a rather primitive stage. Some of the bureaus had computers in their infancy. And there just wasn’t the traffic, the press copy, for Western Union. Now, they closed the House Gallery, and when Walter Shearer, the manager of the Western Union office on the Senate Press Gallery side retired, Jim Mathis moved over there to become the manager.
And they kept that office open quite some time. I remember that when Frank Hewlett was chairman of the Standing Committee, upon learning that they were closing that office, the Standing Committee intervened and wrote letters to the corporate board in New York—as I recall, asking that there was still some patronage for daily-press rate emanating from the Senate Press Gallery and that it would justify keeping it open. And it was a token response. I think six months later they finally closed it. There was something of a small office maintained in the Russell Office Building for the convenience of Members of the Senate. But press copy was a thing of the past. No longer was Postal and Western Union the primary delivery of press copy.
Johnson:
And the Standing Committee oversaw the House and the Senate press galleries?
West:
Yes. It was…
Johnson:
It was just one Standing Committee for both?
West:
Well, I think initially—again from what I can glean from old, dusty records—and I should mention, I think, at this point that on slack days and nonevent days I used to spend a lot of time in the attic of the Capitol building. Not many people know there was an attic. And I would rummage through old ledgers—and I’m surprised I have any respiratory system left—but I used to rummage through these old payroll records. And, in fact, nationwide I know my mother’s small town of Martinsburg, there was sort of bookbinders who traveled the country. And they would stop in a city hall, and they’d take the papers for the year and bind them and letter them, sometimes with a bit of gold etching and so forth. And the House of Representatives was no exception. A lot of the old payroll handwritten records were bound, and some were not. Some were just stacked. Some would be in an old paper bag that disintegrated when you lifted it. And so I spent a lot of time rummaging through those things. And I had the help of a couple of fellows whose offices abutted those attic entrances. So I was able to [68:00] glean here and there things that probably never found their way into a written text or reference service.
And the result of all that kind of rummaging about is that it manifested itself into an intense interest in the House of Representatives as an institution. And also as kind of a press gallery historian. And I don’t dub myself that, but I do know that a number of times I was informally referred to as the “third floor parliamentarian” and also the “walking historian.” And what compensation it had beyond personal pride was a lot of telephone calls at night at home. Can you think of anything comparing to this, you know?
Johnson:
This would be from Members of Congress calling you, or reporters?
West:
No. It would be from the Washington press corps.
Johnson:
Okay.
West:
By and large, most Washington bureaus could get something into the final edition as late as 11:00 at night. So it was not uncommon. One, in particular, comes to mind—was back I think in the middle ’70s. The Senator from North Carolina—I believe his name was [John Porter] East—went in one Saturday afternoon to his office, locked the door, and shot himself to death. He was in very failing health. And apparently it wasn’t discovered until 9:00 or so. And my phone rang several times. And the New York Times called and the reporter I knew who had been a regular House man and was now the night editor in the Washington bureau. “Can you think of anything like this?” And I said, “yes.” I said, “Back in the late ’50s”—I said, “I’m not positive of the name.” I said—“I think it was [Lester Callaway] Hunt, but a Senator from Wyoming did the same thing, shot himself to death in his office.” Well, that made the front page the next morning of the Times. But it was just tidbits like that that just kind of stay in the memory, some circumstance on the House Floor of the moment. And not to relegate everything to memory, a part of my information system that I created in 1958 was a book of past occurrences or historical occurrences, and I had them labeled: “Last Quorum Call Exceeding Thirty Minutes” or “Members Being Seated,” “Words Taken Down.” And so, and I did that—most of it I walked around with. But I wanted my staff—or my staff colleagues at that time—to be able to have the same [72:00] potential if I’m not there or I’m tied up in the chamber or elsewhere. The House Press Gallery gained an immense reputation for efficiency and productivity. And I’m intensely proud of that because I, immodestly, was responsible for most of it. I devised and introduced the files for our information system, which was heavily utilized and highly trusted.
Now when I went to the press gallery in 1942, Tony Demma, who became the first assistant following Mr. Thrift’s death, had a filing system involving about three or four standard-size filing cabinets.
Johnson:
I’m going to ask you to elaborate on that in a minute, but I need to switch CDs.
West:
Oh, surely.

End of Part One – Beginning of Part Two

Johnson:
You were just talking about how you were innovative on your job and about your filing system.
West:
Well, Tony Demma, who took over from the late Chester Thrift, had his own file system. But it was under lock and key, and no one else on the staff was allowed to go into it. And that's the way we operated. If someone came in to ask you a question…
Johnson:
And just to back up a second, who would be asking you questions? Would this be staff, or reporters?
West:
The reporters.
Johnson:
The reporters? Okay.
West:
Oh, yes, yes.
Johnson:
And congressional staff, too? Or was it mainly reporters asking questions?
West:
Well, it was mainly reporters. And Tony enjoyed a bit of a reputation for his file system. But if a question came to you, the point that bothered me is that many times the question was a rather simple one, and you would appear rather imbecilic because you couldn’t respond. And that used to bother me.
Johnson:
Do you have an example of what kinds of questions would be asked?
West:
Well, for example, they might ask you the status of a bill. I’ll manufacture a title: “Military Construction Authorization.” Where is it? Is it in committee? Or has it passed the House? Well, that’s a rather simple question, but if you can’t get in the drawer, it makes you look a bit of a nerd. Well, anyway, that’s how we operated for several years. And, tragically, in 1958, Mr. Demma had a postoperative hemorrhage and died. And so Mr. Embly became the deputy, and I become the second assistant. And a new staffer was hired. Among my many suddenly inherited tasks was this information system.
So we opened the drawer and, as I remember there were two four-drawer file cabinets in the east room. And we opened them, and only the originator could fathom what the contents actually were. There was some alphabetizing, but there was no basic structure. For example, one of the features I introduced in my system was the so-called “additional reference logo.” Underneath the main index on the file, I would—in uppercase—put A-D-D-R-E-F, Additional Reference. And then I might say, “H.R. 10, Authorization 1949.” So that way you knew that the money bill had a genesis with the authorization bill. But there was nothing like that in his system. I mean, it was a system unto him. He could go back there, and I can remember him struggling a time or two to find it, but it was unto him. And much of it, Mr. Embly and I decided, we would discard.
[4:00] After Tony’s death, I would sit home in the evenings, kind of thinking on my responsibilities and new responsibilities. And so the file system was one of my preeminent thoughts and priorities. So Mr. Embly and I convened for hours and hours, and we went through this, envelope by envelope, and some of it I retained. In particular, he would have newspaper clippings from the morning paper following a passage or some episode or something. So, those clippings I retained and transcribed, using a record-size manila envelope. That was the heart of our system, of my system. And the upper right-hand corner would be the name of the text and label. At the end I would always put “77/1,” 77th Congress, First Session. That made it much easier to trace back to other documentation. Maybe three years later, you want to pull a file jacket for 77/1, and there it all is in detail. I mentioned earlier the AddRef logo under that. And I set this all up in two forms. One was legislation pending and, ultimately, previous legislation, and two, statistical and historical. I kept all that separate. But it was intermingled with a cross-reference system. And one led to the other. It put you on the trail.
Dick and I spent the better part of our spare time—I’d say, two or three weeks—going through all these old files and discarding them. And I ended up with about a stack of record-size envelopes, maybe seven or eight inches high, and I was starting anew. My method was not all that complex. I would make up a jacket, and it would be “APPROPRIATIONS”—uppercase, comma “legislative” lowercase “77/1,” and then the bill number would be underneath of it. And then, with each step of that legislation, when the Appropriations Committee reported it, a copy of the printed report would go in that envelope. A copy of the reported bill would go in that envelope. And then, as it proceeded to the House Floor, the first entry typed on that jacket would be, “Passed House, 336 to 29,” whatever the date. And then a copy of the bill as passed by the House would be substituted for the original reported bill. Because I had to worry about volume. I couldn’t let them get too voluminous. So, step by step, it was marked on the face of the jacket. So I could hand that jacket to a reporter, and he doesn’t even have to open the contents. It all unfolds right there, right there on the cover. And so, as the several years progressed, so did our file system, and so did its reputation.
Johnson:
Was this something that everyone in the gallery could access? The staff could gain access?
West:
No. Only staff. [8:00]
Johnson:
But anyone on your staff could access the files?
West:
Right. That was part of my program also. You see, I had to live with the era of—you were the, well, not the village idiot, you were the gallery idiot. {laughter} To make an analogy. And so I knew a long taste of that, and I made sure that every staffer knew how to use this system. And they also knew that Mr. Embly was absent with some frequency, and I was the unofficial boss. So everybody was cooperative and, in fact, I would say with one exception, and that’s not quite a fair classification, they were enthusiastic about it. But it did make you work harder, because some of it you had to walk around with. Because as its depth grew, the mechanics of it expanded. So you just couldn’t say, “Well, all I have to remember is A to Z.” It got more complicated than that. But manageable. And so it got an immense, favorable use reputation. And, as I say, it added to my traffic at home a lot of the time. And so that was one of the innovations.
Then I started another system, of what I call the “oddity book.” If something unusual or unique developed, it went into that oddity book. Many times I wrote it up myself in almost reporter’s fashion, or news format: “The House of Representatives today enacted legislation,” etc., etc. So whenever we had that unusual circumstance—for example, one night we had—well, I say “night,” as I remember—I was on duty in the back row 29 consecutive hours. Yeah. You try that sometime. On coffee and cold hot dogs.
Johnson:
Why were you there so long?
West:
{laughter} And so Speaker [John] McCormack—the gimmick in this equal-time dispute involved George Wallace as sort of a coequal candidate.7 And it wouldn’t be just a debate between a Republican and a Democratic candidate. Wallace would be a part of that. Well, the opponents were just utilizing one point of no quorum after another. And, of course, upon completion of the point of no quorum, many of them would flee to the cloakrooms or out in the Speaker’s Lobby, and some of the fellows popping up: “Point of order, Mr. Speaker.” Well, Mr. McCormack got a little annoyed at this because this has been going on now for about 10 hours. And he ordered a Sergeant at Arms to lock the chamber doors. Well, right away, these reporters: “When did that happen? When did that happen?” Well, I must say, it was not in my book of oddities, and I never did locate it after the event. But there was one episode that suggested that somewhere during the debates in the Civil War era of the so-called Missouri Compromise that the presiding officer had ordered the doors locked, but it wasn’t that definitive. And so, as far as I know, Speaker McCormack, is in fact, the only one who ever ordered the chamber doors locked.8
[12:00] There was an episode with Speaker Thomas Reed. He was beset one day with a controversy, and the Members continued to disappear. And points of no quorum were made. Tiring of this tactic the Speaker counted the hats hanging on the back wall of the chamber and announced that a quorum was present. A gentleman jumped up in protest. He said, “Mr. Speaker, I have counted the chamber, and there’s not a quorum present.” And the Chair said, “it is a nasty day out there, and the Chair feels that Members would not have left without those hats.” {laughter} So that went into the oddity book; when I first read that, I put that in the oddity book, but that was kind of apart from the doors being locked, but somewhat akin.
So, anyway, the information system grew to be a respected institution, and I can remember—not frequently, of course—but I can remember two or three times the House Parliamentarian called me, and Bill Brown and I were immense close friends. We were institutional relatives, actually. And I can remember, two or three times, he would call to ask if my memory was regarding this episode, or there was an impending request to be made of the Speaker—do you run across anything in history? And two times, it’d click. I remember, two times it clicked.
Johnson:
You had a reputation as a historian.
West:
Well, my reputation was, as I think I mentioned earlier, at least among the journalists—I didn’t know it had spread, kind of, throughout the House wing—that I was a very competent third-floor parliamentarian. And, also, that I was a walking historian of the House. And, immodestly, I felt entitled to those informal designations, because I worked and studied rather hard on it.
I neglected to give you a bit of my personal background. So in my school years, from grades one through nine, I was a straight-A student. So that summer, when I graduated from the ninth grade, my mother said—after about a month, because for about two years I’d been living off of my paper route, to be honest. And we weren’t starving, but we were getting awfully close. And, of course, now the war is on, wage and price controls are not going into effect yet. So she gave me about a month to play ball down at the school yard a couple blocks away. And one day she took me aside and she said, “We’re not going to make it on this, and you’re going to have to find a full-time job and go to school at night.” So through a neighbor down the street who was a doorkeeper on the Senate side, and my [16:00] mother knew—just casually talked to him now and again, when the mailman comes by or something. He said, “Well”—apparently she must have run it by him or something—“Well, I'll ask about it.” Well, a day or so later, why, he told her that there was an opening in the Architect’s office, and that he had arranged for—I still remember the name—Senator Josiah Bailey of North Carolina to give me a letter of introduction. Which in those days, given our patronage system, was virtually a command performance: “I’d like to introduce Benjamin C. West.”
Johnson:
That’s all you needed.
West:
But, between the lines. And the Architect, being a very shrewd fellow, I’m sure read it that way. So that’s how I got my first job as an electrician’s helper. And so, as a consequence, my first job was 7:30 in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon. Well, fortunately, in that period of time, the District of Columbia had an excellent evening high school system. And so I enrolled. So, I entered high school at night. Well, it created problems because [of] the rule of the House and the rule of Mr. Donaldson: when the House was in session, you stayed. And I never understood why, when the House was in session at 8:00 and 9:00 at night, that the finance office, which was on the first floor of the Capitol in those days, was open. The dining room, yes. The post office, why? But that was the rule. And the same was true in my first press gallery job, which was not uncommon, was Monday through Saturday. On Saturday afternoon, about 4:30, if the boss said, “Well, why don’t you take the rest of the day off,” that was like a holiday. The hours [during] nonsession days [were] 9:00 in the morning to 6:30 at night. And then if there was a poker game going or a reporter still writing, the little man—to wit, me—you stayed.
Well, this was creating quite a complication in my educational pursuits. So I went to Mr. Donaldson one day, and I said, “You know, I go to school Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.” As I remember, it was 7:00–11:00. And, of course, in that period, the streetcar went right down Pennsylvania Avenue, and one of the evening high schools, which was then Hine Junior High School during the day, was a D.C. high school at night. And high school at night is not great fun; I mean, there are no cheerleaders, there’s no art, there’s no music, there’s no assembly. And it was just drab learning.
Johnson:
And then after working all day, having to go to school.
West:
And after working all day—nice of you to refresh my memory on that. See, I’m fatigued even today from that experience. So I went to Mr. Donaldson and I said, “Is there some way…” I said, you know, “If the House is in session, that’s important…” “But,” I said, “waiting for a reporter to finish, or stand[ing] there [20:00] watching the poker…” I became an excellent poker player, kibitzing.
Johnson:
Was that common?
West:
Almost every day.
Johnson:
These were reporters and the staff playing poker together?
West:
Well, there was some staff involvement, but it was mostly reporters. Now, Tony was an habitué of the game, I’ll say. And Jimmy Griffin, who I mentioned earlier, as a Page boy back under “Uncle Joe” Cannon, he was an habitué of the gallery, and he spent many hours in the poker game. And so did the tally clerk. But mostly reporters. And then, usually at the other table in the main room there would be a hearts game going, too.
Johnson:
Oh, okay.
West:
But never when the House was in session. That was Mr. Donaldson’s rule and it was my rule as well. Although the poker games had long disappeared in the late ’60s. It started dying out in the late ’60s. So I went to Mr. Donaldson and I said, you know, “I’m here.” He said, “Well, you live nearby.” Well, that’s true. At that time, I lived on Carol Street, which is dead center in the middle of the Madison Library now.9 But he said, “That’s the rule. You have to stay.” So I was missing quite a bit, but I managed to get through. So anyway, Mr. Donaldson was unrelenting, but I got through and graduated. But it started to telegraph itself further, because now, as a former Marine in World War II, I’m entitled to what is called the GI Bill of Rights. And also that GI Bill of Rights stipulated that your former employer had to rehire you for one year, assuming you gave credible service and the like. And I wanted to come back, I enjoyed it. The pay was terrible. My starting salary in the press gallery was $960 per annum.
So, with the GI Bill—now, I did take some college courses, a few. The Marine Corps, now the war is over, had what was called the Marine Corps Institute. And you would write and they would send you the subject—similar to this, they would send you paperback textbooks, that sort of thing. So anyway, I’m back to work. And I enroll. And it’s the same old thing. We’ve got all the postwar legislation going through Congress. We would meet many nights. And so after one semester I [24:00] went to a professor that I kind of liked, and I said, “I’m wasting the taxpayers’ money.” I said, “My schedule is so erratic and so unpredictable.” And I said, “I’m just going to have to make other arrangements.” And he said, “Well, let me give you one parting piece of advice.” He said, “During your lifetime, you read a couple of thousand good books, and you’ll be just as intelligent as the rest of us.” Well, I thought about that, and I suspect—I’m only speculating—but I suspect I pictured a room with 2,000 books stacked up awaiting me. Very foreboding scene.
But not long thereafter, I learned that—and this is before the East Front of the Capitol, which I think was 1958, that was put on—I learned that there was a one-room Library of Congress substation right off of Statuary Hall. I remember to this day: You took two steps down, and there was a little trolley that ran underground from the East Front of the Capitol to the Library of Congress. And department heads had privileges to check out books.
Johnson:
You became well read.
West:
I became well read. My duties, particularly as the years progressed, would lend itself to some sort of on-site reading because I’d be working the back row of the chamber, keeping our log of activity, and along about the 20th Member who’s saying the same damn thing, I would pull my book out from under the shelf. And I would give them the benefit of one ear, but that’s about all he enjoyed. And I just read book, after book, after book.
Johnson:
So one of your responsibilities was to keep a log of activities on the floor?
West:
That was one of my main responsibilities. That activity in my early years, and apparently during the ’20s and ’30s, was not maintained. Now, a time or two I remember Tony Demma would go in the chamber and take notes, like on appropriation bills, particularly War Department or Appropriations. You see, there was no defense unification during World War II. But absent that, it was rare that we had anyone on the staff working the chamber full-time. But at the same time, the reporters were more in-resident than today. One reporter may cover Justice Department, House Judiciary, a far-flung empire. But in those days, the reporters were more in-house and not specialty-topic beats.
But in 1947, as things were taking on, sort of, new dimensions, and the government is obviously expanding, the suggestion was made on both the Senate side and the House side to maintain a log of activities—proceedings of the House of Representatives: the date, Tuesday, or whatever. And the one-minute speeches [28:00] were listed and the subject matter. You didn’t attempt any verbatim note taking, but it was the subject matter that sort of opened the door to a reporter who may have been elsewhere. He comes in at 1:30, he’s leafing through the one-minute speeches, and say he represents the Omaha World Herald. Mr. [Roman] Hruska of Nebraska is listed. One minute, dash, subject matter. He is now aware. Generally, he would ask, “You remember kind of the substance of what he said?” which usually you did. Or he would say, “I’m going to go down and talk to him.” You would send your card in or request, you want to talk—and the Member would come out and speak with you. So that helped him. Well, that became very popular almost immediately. And at one time the superintendent was going to divest himself of it. Bad idea. It [had] already gained an acceptance, shall we say. It gave a little extra leverage to the reporter, who could be a little less diligent as the day progressed, because he now has a backup system.
Johnson:
They could rely on your log.
West:
Nothing is ever going to elude him. So it became very popular. And initially Mr. Embly took it as his main responsibility, and I was his relief man. He and Elizabeth lived at the 300 block of East Capitol Street, and he’d go home to lunch every day. So, I would relieve him for about an hour, hour and a half. And sometimes he was doing something else, or he just was tired or something or other. So he and I handled the proceedings for the press gallery and the reporters. And that’s a very demanding task, and as the years progressed, it became even more demanding. One, you very quickly learn to be a good parliamentarian. Because the proceedings of the House are extremely complicated. To an outsider, or even a veteran reporter, he can lose it right there, just on a turn of a technicality. Numerous times there are legislative circumstances in which a “no” vote means, “I approve a proposition.” And for a reporter, you know, he’s just sort of floundering about in that maze of complexity.10
You have to recognize all 435 Members of the House. Some fellow jumps up in the back row and says, “Mr. Speaker, you’re a nogoodnick!” And a dozen reporters say, “Who’s that?” So you had to know all the Members. And so it was quite a prelude of study, to arm yourself with the essentials to bring good discharge to your responsibilities. Absolutely. You didn’t just walk in cold.
Over the years, particularly during my tenure as a department head, it would be seven, eight months before I would leave the gallery with a new staffer at the desk alone. Six to eight months’ background before I would leave anyone alone.
Johnson:
So that’s a sign of the complexity…
West:
Sometimes I would even stay myself just to avoid that circumstance. [32:00]
[A 2-minute, 32-second segment of this interview has been redacted.]
After Mr. Embly became superintendent, we reversed roles and I became the full-time occupant assigned to the chamber.
Johnson:
In what year?
West:
That was January 1960. Mr. Embly was the deputy, for two years—from 1958 to 1960—he was pretty much occupied being acting superintendent. Because Mr. Donaldson was in his privileged days and was on board maybe an hour or two each day. And his long habit in, I guess about—well, actually, beginning with my start [36:00] there—he came to the gallery [at] 11:30 in the morning to be on time for Speaker [Sam] Rayburn’s pre-session noon press conference every day. And a quick note in that regard—the left-hand corner of the Speaker’s desk was always reserved as a standing position for the press gallery superintendent. That was kind of a tradition, I’m told. And, indeed, during my tenure I always stood on the corner of that desk. So, Dick is largely acting superintendent much of the time, because Mr. Donaldson would come back from the Speaker’s press conference. He would give us, most of the time, an outlook on the schedule that day. We didn’t have the formal Whip operations that we know today, and have for many years—program announced a week in advance and almost instant communication if there’s a change. We didn’t have those luxuries that you folks now enjoy. And I’m sure it’s a valuable tool, I don’t criticize it at all. So I assumed that job almost full-time. Dick would relieve me for lunch, and occasionally, if there was a night session, he would spell me around 7:00. And I would go down—I had privileges both on the floor and in the cloakrooms—and Helen Sewell, who I knew as a little junior high school girl, helping her father, Ben Jones, who tended the concessions stand.
Johnson:
From the Republican…
West:
Yes. And do you know Helen is still living?
Johnson:
Yes. She worked in the Republican Cloakroom.11
West:
She worked in the Republican Cloakroom. And it was not that I had any Republican bias—the old fellow who worked over in the Democratic side, he was so incorrigible, even the Members didn’t like him. So I kind of struck up with Mr. Jones, and we became very friendly, and that’s how I knew her.
So Dick would spell me, and I’d go down to the cloakroom and Ben Jones would fix me a sandwich. And then they had one refrigerator. It wasn’t quite as elaborate as in recent times, it was just a refrigerator. My furniture nomenclature’s a little rusty. I think that’s called a breakfront, where you have a cabinet up front, some drawers—well, that’s what he worked from. So I’d go down and get a hot dog or a sandwich and a soft drink or something. But for practical purposes, I worked the chamber full-time.
Johnson:
When you were in the cloakroom and other places, did you have a lot of interaction with Members?
West:
In large degree, particularly if they were standing at the counter. Now, it was understood that kind of the back portion of the cloakroom was not off-limits, but kind of respected as a Members’ little whispering area. I rarely saw any whispering, but that was the fashion of the place. But my goodness, yes, I had developed numerous friendships there, standing at the counter, having a plate of cottage cheese and a half-smoke or something. I became very good friends with Bob Dole when he was a Member of the House. He would eat there frequently at Helen’s counter.
So as the years progressed, I did develop a number of friendships, just as a result of staying there and having a sandwich or a piece of pie or something. And to help [40:00] Dick out, almost immediately I started bringing my lunch, and I would eat lunch around 11:20 for a noon day session. And that way, that would keep him free too, because I say, he had considerable responsibilities and, to this day, I do not begrudge Mr. Donaldson his luxury and job description as he rewrote it, not at all.
Johnson:
Earlier you mentioned the preparation that the staff in the press gallery had for the national conventions. What kind of preparation was necessary for Joint Sessions?12
West:
Well, you would have to break that in about three different segments. Because initially and as the years progressed, security progressed. And the complexities and the volume of meetings and the preparation. It all just mushroomed. President Roosevelt was here to address a Joint Session to report on Yalta. And so, as was the custom, 500 copies of the President’s address (usually 500 copies) was sent to the House Floor for the Members’ use. And 100 copies was sent to the press gallery for reporters’ use. Well, on this day our copies didn’t show up. Mr. Donaldson told me to go down to the Speaker’s Lobby and see if our copies have mistakenly been left there. And he added, “I don’t want to see you walking.” So I did. I took off, and the press elevator—it was sort of a combination Members and press elevator on the east end—was just coming up. So I opened the door and I go charging in, and I go down to the second floor. Well, immediately to the right of the press elevator are the two doors leading into Speaker Rayburn’s private office, in which Mr. Roosevelt was waiting to go into the Joint Session. As the elevator doors open, this young, enthusiastic, under-instruction staffer leaps at the same time that one Secret Service man pushes Mr. Roosevelt’s wheelchair immediately in front of me. And I had the physical dexterity in those days to turn sideways, and on the wall—I suspect it’s still there (it’s an antique)—is a huge cast-iron mailbox. It sits about two feet away from the face of the elevator. And I went in there and I hit it and my head caught the corner of it. And I was slightly [44:00] stunned, and I’m sure the President was too, to be honest. I think it was a shared emotion here. And I remember him saying, “Are you all right, young man?” I said, “Yes sir, I think so.” And he extended his hand, and I shook his hand. And it turned out later that it kept intact: I shook hands with and/or was introduced to and/or personally knew every President from Franklin Roosevelt through Ronald Reagan.
Johnson:
That’s a great story.
West:
But that bizarre event, in the pursuit of my duties, had almost toppled over the President. And he looked terribly bad that day. I’ll always remember it. I’ll always remember the haunting features. In fact, I don’t think I’m too far off in recalling he died about six weeks later at Warm Springs. I think I’m correct.
Johnson:
Not long after.
West:
Yeah, right.
Johnson:
Did you find your copies?
West:
And the copies were—thank goodness, right. My sacrifice wasn’t all for naught. So I brought them back up. But to answer your question about preparations—apparently there was a Secret Service man stationed at the Democratic entrance to the Speaker’s Lobby, and this one Secret Service fellow wheeling Mr. Roosevelt out, and that was his security complement. Now, perhaps one or two in the galleries, but that was his security complement. Whereas, today, I used to almost dread the pre-Joint Session security meetings, because I knew they were going to be lengthy, prolonged, very complex. And sometimes there’s always some fellow that doesn’t get the word and your great planning goes awry. Yeah, it just suddenly went awry. But that was his security.
But now, as the years progressed, the press gallery has 90 seats assigned to it within the chamber. And we had two doors leading into it, unlike the Senate; it only has one. The Senate, incidentally, enjoys many luxuries over the House, but the Senate Chamber, being much smaller, allowed for a much larger press gallery. Oh my goodness, I used to drool when I walked in there. And also, because of that kind of patronage appointment, although it was only summer help, but I didn’t like the precedent being established, which has come back to haunt them, which I’ll tell you about later. It haunts them more so today. The 90 seats—there is a pre-fixed, assigned list of those entitled to entrance to the chamber. And as a part of the preparation for the Joint Session, or a Joint Meeting, you post that notice in the House and Senate press galleries. But it’s a House event, obviously. And you issue a special ticket which you provide samples [of] at the House door, the south door, so that reporters coming in that night have access—you still have their actual ticket of admission to the chamber in your possession. As a security measure, you don’t distribute that early. But they come in: “I’m covering the Joint Session.” They have an interim pass or their congressional press gallery card. [48:00] Well, that brings them into the press gallery. I borrow two staffers, and usually the Senate superintendent comes with them. I borrow two staffers so I can have a House staffer on the outside of the chamber—I’m sorry, have a Senate staffer on the outside of the door to the chamber—and a House staffer on the inside. I double-teamed it, always. And even though you may be in the press gallery 300 days a year, you do not get through that door without showing the separate ticket I have issued you from my back office in the west room.
Johnson:
How did you decide how to issue the tickets?
West:
The list on which the issue was developed over many years—inherited, if you will. And, indeed, until I revised it—with some controversy, I might add—there was obviously some favoritism involved. And so I revamped it, essentially, one seat per bureau. Well, in one case, Scripps Howard, which is a news chain, they had five entries. Newhouse, which is a chain, they had four or five. But they were listed as individual papers, but they were Newhouse-owned. The reporters were working out of their Newhouse News bureau in Washington. And I didn’t think that was fair, to have people…I also issued standing tickets, except the first row. Second row, back row—you leaned against the wall. And I didn’t think it was fair that people were standing against the wall, when bureaus had more than one ticket. So I revamped it, and I put it into effect, and it made several people angry. But they got over it.
[A 1-minute, 54-second segment of this interview has been redacted.]
And, fortunately, we had an ally in [Speaker Thomas] Tip O’Neill, who happened to also be a very warm friend and fellow golfer. {laughter}
Johnson:
Did you and Speaker O’Neill golf together?
West:
We were going to, but our schedules never blended for a date. And so once in my case, and once in the [House] Radio-TV Gallery’s case, we went directly to the Speaker, as Rule 34 gives us the license to do. Section 930, I believe, in my office. And a highly placed staffer to Tip O’Neill reported to us later that the Doorkeeper was instructed to lay off. That was not his jurisdiction. But unfortunately, there were other times—he was undeterred.
Johnson:
I read an article, and it mentioned that the Doorkeeper at one point was upset that all the seats weren’t filled in the gallery that were allocated for the press.
West:
There was one episode—and I don’t remember who the—it was a Joint Meeting of Congress.
Johnson:
It was a foreign leader that was addressing Congress.
West:
It was. It was a Joint Meeting for a foreign leader. And it wasn’t newsworthy. And the Doorkeeper was unhappy about the press attendance. I think it’s known, perhaps not publicly, but in situations like that, many Members of Congress don’t appear. But they always send a warm body in lieu thereof in the press gallery. {laughter} And the Doorkeeper, apparently, had this vision of some warm bodies in lieu thereof. Well, Mr. West did not take kindly to that idea, and nor did the Standing Committee of Correspondents. Because, well, one, we were fearful—at least I was. I didn’t want the precedent, because now and again I would get a request from—sometimes from a Member himself or herself—“Well, I’m going to make a very important speech today.” And, of course, subliminally suggesting it’s going to be vastly newsworthy—you want to fill the galleries here. And could my staffer take notes or something? Well, that’s obviously a bit of a ploy because probably the staffer’s the one who typed up the speech. So I always had to decline that because I didn’t want to set that precedent. Because I wouldn’t [want to] find myself in—if Winston Churchill walked down the center aisle, you know, I don't even have room for standees, and I’ve got a half a dozen clerks sitting down in my front row. So the committee shared my view on that, and the Doorkeeper never got over it. Also, he was very unhappy about a pay increase that one of Michaelson’s staff, in the radio-TV gallery, was inheriting. And he didn’t try to [56:00] block the appointment, but he reduced the pay $5,000 in a move he described as his “administrative authority.” And the TV committee, the equivalent of my Standing Committee—I think they call it their executive committee—or did, I don’t know about now. And so they went to Mr. O’Neill, and Mr. O’Neill had a private meeting with this now-beleaguered Doorkeeper. {laughter}
Johnson:
Even though you fell under the jurisdiction of the office of the Doorkeeper, the Standing…
West:
See, that was the bone of contention. We were not under his jurisdiction.
Johnson:
Well, listed in the…
West:
We were listed on his payroll only.
Johnson:
Right. And the staff telephone directories also listed the press gallery…
West:
That was a change that we went to war over. And that also got changed.
Johnson:
Okay.
West:
Unbeknownst to me, Ben Guthrie was then Clerk of the House, and the Doorkeeper went to Guthrie and wanted these big telephone-index cards that you post for public display and use, to change that configuration and take the press gallery out of its separate listing and put it under the Doorkeeper’s Office because we were on his payroll.13 And no Doorkeeper in history ever disputed the press gallery autonomy. It was just a payroll add-on, period.
[A 1-minute, 13-second segment of this interview has been redacted.]
And one of his pet peeves, I learned later on after our disputes were already ongoing, [was] that somehow someone told him that I was a very close friend of “Fishbait” Miller, Mr. William Miller. And I’m one of the few people that called him “Bill,” and only because, as a very impressionable young fellow, I was in the chamber one day and the then-Majority Leader McCormack was paying tribute to [60:00] “Fishbait” Miller, who started out as a doorman in 1941, I believe. And he carried Members’ laundry and their dry cleaning. That’s how he kind of ingratiated himself, and it worked; he went right up through the ranks. So one day, Mr. McCormack, for some reason, is paying tribute to Mr. Miller, who I think now is Doorkeeper, yeah. Yes. He made a point. He said, “Mr. Speaker, in paying tribute to Bill Miller”—and kind of a hush fell over everyone. “Who’s Bill Miller?” {laughter} He continued, “Mrs. McCormack said he is an Officer of the House, and “Fishbait’ is inappropriate.” {laughter} Well, that stuck in my thoughts for years, and I always called him “Bill.” Well, somehow the Doorkeeper came of the notion that I possessed some dirty linen about Bill Miller. And it’s absolutely false. The most dastardly deed I ever heard about Bill Miller was—and it was told to me in person by—in fact, sadly, his obit was in the paper the other day—William Jennings Bryan Dorn of South Carolina, former chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. We were close friends because he married a reporter and close friend of mine in the press galleries. One of his constituents had sent him a huge country ham, and somehow or another it was directed to the Doorkeeper’s Office. Mr. Dorn is sitting in the press gallery, in the presence of several reporters and myself, and he said, “Do you know”—and he’s got his hands apart about two and a half feet—“when that ham finally made its way to my office, three big slices were missing out of the middle.” And he says, “I know who got them.” {laughter} ““Fishbait Miller.” And that is the only dastardly deed I ever heard about “Fishbait” Miller. He was famous for kind of rifling some of the goodies.
See, that’s another thing that’s long gone: Members took great pride in the product within their district, whether it was peaches, Vidalia onion, sockeye salmon, or something. And, to be sure, the press gallery was always a recipient of this largesse. There’d be a couple of bushel baskets of freshly picked peaches the day before. You know, not the stuff in the supermarket that was picked last year. And reporters—they would come into the gallery and they would have a big, brown paper box of something—sockeye salmon from Alaska, perhaps. That came to the press gallery quite a bit, and to individual Members. And Bill Dorn was one. He got a bushel of peaches and [a] big country ham from some company in his district. And it was very commonplace. And “Fishbait” was notorious for “skimming” it, was the kindly designation we all used. So it was just kind of his trademark and everyone thought it was humorous. But Bill was a bit disenchanted about these three missing pieces right in the middle. I mean, the middle is prime country. A couple off the end, we’ll forgive. But, anyway, the Doorkeeper had this fixation that I had dirty linen on Mr. Miller, and I did not. And we got along famously. Mr. Miller always respected the tradition that he inherited and the adjunct to his payroll that he inherited.
Johnson:
Well, I think this is a good place to wrap up because we don’t have much time remaining.
West:
Okay. [64:00]
Johnson:
I was hoping you could talk briefly about your tie clip.
West:
Oh, tie clasp. Well, actually, it was given to me by Lyndon Johnson, and he had them prepared to give to $10,000-plus donors. And I knew Mr. Johnson, slightly, as the Majority Leader on the other side. But I did see him with some frequency because Speaker Rayburn was sort of sponsoring him for the presidency, as time progressed. So, frequently I’d go to a press conference with Mr. Rayburn and Johnson would be there, so we knew one another. But exactly how—I mean, the card said: “Thank you, Lyndon Johnson.” And it was addressed to me. And beyond that, it’s all a mystery. It’s been a treasured possession, much like my convention medals—some of them personalized—that I acquired over the years. At one time, I was offered a bit of money for them, but I’m keeping those for my two children. They can divide it in half. My son is a conservative Democrat, so he’ll get the Democrat ones, and my daughter is a Republican, so she’ll get the Republican ones.
Johnson:
That works out well.
West:
And so it worked out just right.
Johnson:
Well, thank you very, very much. I enjoyed this.
West:
Well, if you decide you want to expand beyond, there’s much more I can provide for you.
Johnson:
That would be great. Thank you.

Footnotes

  1. For a brief summary of the career of Benjamin C. West, see “Longtime Press Gallery House Employee Benjamin C. West,” Weekly Historical Highlights, Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/highlights.html?action=view&intID=355.
  2. Joe Cannon of Illinois was Speaker of the House from 1903 to 1911.
  3. For more on the history of Statuary Hall, see “National Statuary Hall,” Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://clerk.house.gov/
    art_history/art_artifacts/virtual_tours/statuary_hall/index.html    .
  4. William (Bill) Brown served as Parliamentarian of the House of Representatives from 1974 to 1994. For more on his career, see “William Holmes Brown; House Parliamentarian,” 29 May 2001, Washington Post: B06; Two Representatives served from the state of Arkansas in 1857: Alfred Burton Greenwood and Edward Allen Warren.
  5. Mr. West later asked that the following statement be appended to his response: “I have recently found a paper authored by Frederick B. Marbut (professor of journalism, University of Pennsylvania, 1961) that appears to authoritatively trace the Standing Committee of Correspondents’ origin to the era of Speaker Samuel Randall in 1877, imperfect records show. The actual first use of that designation seems to have occurred in 1879 and continues until today. Given Mr. Marbut’s high level of accuracy on modern-day events that I witnessed, his examination of origin and date for the committee seems praiseworthy and to be authentic in my view.”
  6. From the Latin, meaning “without setting a day.” A sine die adjournment signifies that Congress has adjourned or suspended business at the end of an annual or special session.
  7. For information on the former governor of Alabama, see Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000); Howell Raines, “George Wallace, Segregation Symbol, Dies at 79,” 14 September 1998, New York Times: A1.
  8. For more information on the incident, see “Most Roll Call Votes Prior to Electronic Voting,” Weekly Historical Highlights, Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/highlights.html?action=view&intID=410.
  9. The Madison Building is one of the three buildings of the Library of Congress. For information on the history of these buildings, see http://www.loc.gov/loc/legacy/bldgs.html.
  10. Mr. West later added the following: “A case in point: In a late session well into the evening, the House was embattled by a controversial proposal to sell jetfighter planes to Taiwan. Customarily, accredited foreign reporters spend the bulk of their day at the State Department, but in this topic area it is headline stories back home. As a result, the press gallery is well-populated by Pacific Rim reporters on this night. Finally we reach the roll call stage on this reversed question, resulting in the approval of the sales proposition. Instantly I am besieged by 20-plus Asian reporters convinced that the proposal had been defeated. I was unconvincing to all of them as they fled to the State Department for confirmation of the defeat. Sadly, they found it there—at least initially. Fortunately for the two of them—one Japanese and one Korean—my reputation preceded me, and they returned to the press gallery that night to discuss my version of the events. I converted them to my description, and they based their stories accordingly. I still remember the Korean’s parting remark: “Mr. West, if you are wrong, I will be fired tomorrow.’ Well, later on he became the Washington bureau chief. Perhaps my role aided his career.”
  11. Helen Sewell was alive at the time of this interview. She died on July 18, 2006. For more information on Helen Sewell, see “Longtime House Employee Helen Sewell,” Weekly Historical Highlights, Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/highlights.html?action=view&intID=88; Bree Hocking, “Friends Remember the Smile Behind Café Helen,” 24 July 2006, Roll Call.
  12. 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.
  13. Benjamin Guthrie was Clerk of the House during the 98th and 99th Congresses (1983–1987).