The United Mine Workers frequent the Carlton.
The CIO also played at the Carlton until a Negro delegate was barred. Most of the boys quit in a huff, and moved across 16th St. to the equally tony Hay-Adams, where Negroes are also barred.
Many labor unions are represented by female lobbyists, and some of these will turn a trick in the hay if that helps the sacred cause. The labor broads still don’t run as homely as some of the Congressmen’s wives. For unions and other such pressure cookers do not usually offer money, call-girls or liquor. They threaten to withhold votes back at home.
As soon as a freshman Congressman checks in, the union harpies make a grab for him. One whom we know, a Republican elected to fill an unexpired seat in a Democratic district, received a visit from a couple of union goons the first day he moved into his office. They gave him orders how to vote on a pending measure. Congressman John Saylor, who is six feet four, grabbed them by the necks and walked them to the wall, where he showed them his certificate of election.
“I thought I read my name here, not yours,” he said. Then he threw them out.
One of the most indefatigable female lobbyists is the daughter of former Senator Burt Wheeler. Though her father cleans up representing robber barons, her client is the left-wing United Electrical Workers Union. Congressmen report she’s a pest who coaxes with a smile, and if that doesn’t work, she threatens.
Old-timers in Congress will tell you about the dame lobbyist who represented some milk producers. She was a handsome woman, so voluptuously built that they referred to her as “Elsie the Cow.” Her lobbying career ended in 1937, when she was caught in a hotel room with a Congressman.
For all practical purposes, lobbyists representing unions and minority groups do not often buttonhole Congressmen directly. Dave Niles handles all labor and left-wing angles, and arranges for the votes and rewards or punishments.
Anna Rosenberg, friend of Niles, former New Dealer, practiced industrial relations successfully until her appointment as Assistant Secretary of Defense.
Lobbyists for government bureaus often double as unpaid fixers for pressure groups, using government funds. Entertainments of Congressmen by State Department officials at cocktail parties are referred to as “smokers.”