Animals: Lobbyists

Through the bare corridors of the House Office Building one day last week padded an alert young German shepherd dog named Rex, a harness with a thick handgrip buckled around his shoulders. To the grip clung Rex’s master, Dr. Harry P. Claus of Arlington, Va., a consulting engineer blinded in an airplane crash three years ago. Man and guide turned into a room where a sub-committee of the Interstate Commerce Committee was considering unfavorably a bill to require railroads to permit blind men’s dogs to travel with them on trains.

Present to oppose the bill was R. V. Fletcher, counsel for the Association of American Railroads. He argued that there was no necessity to fix one more onerous law on railroads, that they were glad to do of their own free will what the bill proposed. The subcommittee’s Chairman Alfred L. Bulwinkle of North Carolina and his colleagues were inclined to agree with him. Then Dr. Claus and Rex walked in. Eloquently the young engineer told of the months of training which he and Rex had undergone together at the famed Seeing Eye institute in Morristown, N. J. Most railroads, he conceded, had indeed been willing to let him and Rex travel together, but one had forced them both to ride in a baggage car. As he talked, Rex, with even more eloquence, was thumping his bushy tail on the green committeeroom carpet. Seeing Eye dogs, declared Rex’s master, were taught always to be friendly with everyone, unless commanded otherwise. Amiably Rex rose, stalked up to R. V. Fletcher, stuck out his paw. Grinning, the railway counsel unbent and shook the paw. Unseeing Dr. Claus continued his plea. The 13-month-old dog rolled over on his back, waved his paws, swished his tail. Dr. Claus stopped talking, unleashed the dog. With a bound Rex leaped to Chairman Bulwinkle, licked his hand, his chin. Then the big pup made a circuit of the room, pawing Congressional knees, shaking Congressional hands. After a final shake with Chairman Bulwinkle’s daughter, called in from the next office, Rex returned to his master, nuzzled his knee. “The subcommittee,” twinkled Congressman Bulwinkle, “will favorably report this bill.”

As the economy-minded Senate considered the $571,000,000 Department of Agriculture appropriation bill last week, Idaho’s conscientious Borah spotted an item of $1,000 for care of a herd of cattle in Oklahoma’s Wichita Mountains. It had been recommended not by the Department of Agriculture but by the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Senator Borah rose to question it. Up stood the item’s sponsor, Oklahoma’s handsome white-crested Elmer Thomas, to explain that the cattle were one of the last herds of longhorns left in the U. S. “These cattle are friends of mine,” cried he. “I have been down to see them. I know them.”

“If these cattle are friends of the Senator from Oklahoma,” gravely assented Senator Borah, “then I’m satisfied.”