Lone Lobbyist

As ambitious a bit of lobbying as was ever accomplished in Washington was effected last week by a tall, unique young man famed for his blond hair, loneliness and lack of ignoble motives. The actual lobbying, which usually consists in more or less furtive arguments by adroit advocates in the corridors and committee rooms of Congress, in this case took place at Boiling Field, far away from Capitol Hill. The lobbyist was Col. Charles Augustus Lindbergh and his sole argument was an airplane. He took several score of Congressmen up for a fly. It seemed unlikely that any of them would ever thereafter vote against any air law that may be endorsed by Lobbyist Lindbergh.

Two of the House's four ladies, Mrs. Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts and Mrs. Katherine Langley of Kentucky, were among the first passengers. William P. McCracken Jr., Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Air, was the master of ceremonies who ushered them into the cabin of a huge Fokker transport plane belonging to the Army. Lobbyist Lindbergh sat at the controls smiling. He taxied the length of the muddy field twice, then swooped the legislators around over Washington for a quarter-hour.

Though Lobbyist Lindbergh had invited all of Congress, only two Senators presented themselves at the field the first day --Maine's engaging Hale and Connecticut's meticulous Bingham, who, like Governor Trumbull of Connecticut, is himself a flier.

From the House, however, a swarm of Representatives turned up, many with their eager wives and ecstatic children. After three trips, a valve failed in the big Fokker. Lobbyist Lindbergh changed to a Douglass transport plane and for three days continued his practical propagandizing.

Many were the women, young and old, and men, too, who tried to look like Congressmen's relatives. One impostor actually succeeded in looking like Representative Parks of Arkansas, and was taken aloft.

Among the visitors at the field on the third day was a distinguished old gentleman so bundled up in his greatcoat that few bystanders recognized him at first. He got out of his automobile and hurried over to watch the Lobbyist take off with a fresh load. Smiling like a boy, stepping quickly with excitement, the old gentleman looked as though he wanted to fly too. But he was not asked and it was not until he took off his hat to shake off mud and gravel whirled up by the Lobbyist's propellers, that newsgatherers spotted him as 87-year-old Oliver Wendell Holmes, Associate Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court. He walked back to his car, where his wife was waiting and exclaimed: "It was thrilling! Simply thrilling! "

Of the 531 members of Congress some 250 Representatives and a score of Senators flew. Observers watched to see how Congress would deal with Representative Furlow's bill providing a separate promotion list and "just" pay for the Army Air Corps, for which Col. Lindbergh has spoken.