TRANSITION

THE NEXT REMOVAL was a pretentious one. So successfully had the Club operated and with such an accession of members, that more spacious quarters were required. The Riggs Building had been newly constructed on the site of the old Riggs House at Fifteenth and G Streets. In later years purchasers changed the name to the Albee Building.

The top floor, or nearly all of it, was fitted out as the new clubrooms. There was a commodious lounge with a large, free-burning fireplace; beyond was the dining room with the adjoining wide alcove which could be separated by folding doors and was known as the Flemish Room because of the scheme of decoration of its panelled walls, its platerail adorned by fantastically ornamented steins and its ponderous oak furniture. This could be closed off for intimate parties and also was used as the Board Room.

Across a narrow corridor was the bar, beyond question the snuggest, coziest bar in existence. Here were high-backed settles and a couple off small tables. The actual bar was scarcely longer than the height of a man. Designed comfortably to accommodate perhaps a dozen, it seemed sometimes that the entire membership was crowded into this cubicle. It was across the threshold of this little bar that Carl Groat drooped to mark some sort of press association loyalty. It happened several years later but the story fits here.

Everyone in the newspaper field has heard of what was known as Roy Howard's Peace. Mr. Howard, head of the United Press, was at Brest when an admiral of the United States Navy told him of arrangements for the Armistice that ended the First World War in 1918. Acting as any other correspondent would Mr. Howard sent the story, fortunately being able through a series of complicated circumstances to evade the censorship.

Mr. Groat was on the Washington Bureau of the United Press and when the Washington Times came out about noon with an extra carrying this world-shaking news beat, his intense pride in his press association overcame him. Starting next door to the old Times office at Shoomaker's, he began to celebrate the epochal event. When the grave and dignified Star appeared with its usual afternoon edition. it carried nothing about an Armistice, but the Times issued another extra. Mr. Groat continued wandering up and down Pennsylvania Avenue celebrating.

The burgeoning Press Club set up its third home in the Albee Building in 1914. Enjoying the roof garden are, left row, front to rear; First table Mrs Fred Britton, Representative Fred Britton ( R.-Ill.); second table, L. White Busby, secretary to Speaker Joseph C. Cannon; Franklin L. Fisher, National Geographic Magazine; third table, Russell M. MacLennan, New York Evening Telegram, and Mrs. MacLennan. Just behind and to left of MacLennan, Theodore Tiller, New York Times, and Marvin McIntire, Washington Times, later secretary to President Franklin D. Roosevelt; Right row of tables, second table, Mr. and Mrs. William Showalter, National Geographic; Mrs, Edwin Hood, Miss Gretchen Hood and Edwin Hood, Associated Press.

The whole town was celebrating by that time. There was a parade down the Avenue which a Press Club contingent, organized and led by Everett Watkins of the Indianapolis Star, joined. As it issued from the main entrance of the Riggs Building, this group turned into Fifteenth Street, thereby passing the entrance to Keith's Theatre. Mr. Watkins, seized by an inspiration, darted into the theatre where a rehearsal was in progress, by the sheer force of his enthusiasm kidnapped the bass drum, and returned with it to join and enliven the parade.

Hour by hour excitement built up and then, as the Associated Press through the Star carried no such information and as the War Department and George Creel's Committee on Public Information remained silent a reaction set in. It was on the stroke of midnight that Mr. Groat arrived at the Press Club, loomed in his six-foot-four stature in the narrow door to the little bar and then, booming in a deep sepulchral voice, "This story is getting too damned exclusive" collapsed like a falling sequoia over that historic sill.

The date of the removal to the Riggs Building was March 6, 1914 and on March 20 everything was ready for a house-warming, As Woodrow Wilson had a shelf of books to his credit he had become a member as a writer and it was but natural that he should be the principal figure at this infare. Frank B. Lord was President of the Club but gave place for the moment to the President of the United States.

Although he had been but a year in the White House, Mr. Wilson's discourse that evening bespoke a homesickness for his earlier more private life. He explained to the other members that the public had come to regard him as a cold man. He had, indeed, developed into some sort of machine, capable of adjusting to environment at the shortest notice. "If I were to interpret myself," he said, "I would say that my constant embarrassment is to restrain the emotions inside me. You may not believe it, but I sometimes feel like a fire from a far from extinct volcano and if the lava does not seem to spill over, it is because you are not high enough to see into the crater."

He said he refrained from talking as much as possible. He said he borrowed brains wherever he could. Then he told how amazed he was at the conceptions the public had of him and which made him feel that he was a masquerader.

"If I were free," said the President, "I would come not infrequently to these rooms." He then went on to say that he could go nowhere without officials busying themselves to conduct him and demand that he see this and that monument or person or what not. "I am in the same category,'' Mr. Wilson complained, "as the National Museum, the Washington Monument and the Library of Congress - an object for sightseers.'' He had mused, he said, on the resource of providing himself with an assortment of false whiskers.

Yet President Wilson, reporters recall, was much freer of Secret Service attention than the Presidents of today. Before the First World War there was not the intense preoccupation with security that now prevails. It was Mr. Wilson's practice before the war came in 1917 to make calls upon his Cabinet Members without any previous notice. Many correspondents recall sitting in anterooms waiting to see a Cabinet Member when in would walk the President of the United States, unannounced and unaccompanied.

It was not surprising that the Club attracted such visitors. In 1913 John T. Suter of the Chicago Record Herald was President. Oswald F. Schuette of the Chicago Inter-ocean also served in 1913 and, due to a slight adjustment in the dates of the term. Frank B. Lord of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin was President in parts of 1914 and 1915. These men knew every Member off Congress, some by their first names; every Cabinet Member., every man of any eminence at the National Capital.

Only such men could arrange for Lame Duck Nights the Club used to have. Before the ratification of the Norris Amendment changing the date of the convening of Congress to the first of the year, a member defeated in November would continue to serve until the 4th of March following. The Congress then was accustomed to meet the first Monday in December so the member would act and vote for some three months after he had, in effect, been repudiated by his constituents. Such a member was called a lame duck because, with his political force gone, he could only limp through the remainder of the session. In the intimacy of the Club these statesmen were made fun of and joined in it. An especially well chosen Duck Chaser, as the presiding officer of the evening was called, was Clifford Berryman, the Star's cartoonist for more than a generation, who had many times portrayed every figure that appeared on the informal stage, as well as the world stage.

A part of the architectural decoration of the fireplace in the main lounge were gargoyle-like figures, each with a different expression, which looked down on whoever was below. These gnomes had names. They were called Constant Reader, Old Subscriber, Vox Populi and Pro Bono Publico. And, on the mantel ledge stood the Billiken, as a mild sardonic presiding deity. Could some magician have induced these figures to tell of what they had beheld and heard, startling and precious volumes could have been produced.

With no such spacious auditorium as the Club later built, guests were received in that lounge and made their informal talks there. Of course, for the great events, the Cl ub took the Willard ballroom or a theatre but it was in this lounge that Theodore Roosevelt spoke to the members almost informally to tell them that President Wilson would not accept his proposal to raise a volunteer division in 1917.

Theodore Tiller of the Washington Times was elected President for the 1916 term. It should be noted that, in those early days, all offices in the Club usually were contested. Since that time what is sometimes called the "escalator" more often the royal succession has been practiced whereunder a sort of coursus honorum is run from, say, financial secretary, on through various offices and board membership, up to the vice-presidency. This often is contested, although not invariably, and it has been a long time since the presidency has been challenged - the vice-president succeeding almost automatically.

Theodore Tiller was a remarkable newspaperman. H e was a northward-coming carpetbagger. Finding that the newspaper profession in his native Georgia offered but meagre rewards and that country editors were accustomed to be paid for subscriptions in razorback hogs, cordwood and yams, he made his way northward and became one of the most noted correspondents Washington ever knew.

Next in succession in 1917 came Grafton Wilcox of the Associated Press, a skilled correspondent at home in legislative halls or diplomatic drawing rooms, who went on to become managing editor of the combined Herald- Tribune in later years.

As the Club grew in size and prestige, occasionally some member would suggest that it now was strong enough to dispense with its cash-only fiscal system and permit the signing of chits like most other clubs. Or, at election time, some ticket might be proposed which marked a departure from tradition. There existed what came to be known, for no particular reason, the "Gas-house Gang." These were very active members of the working press, largely men on local papers as opposed to correspondents of New York, Chicago or other distant city papers.

This group acted as a corps of minute men. If anyone wanted to change the constitution or by-laws or to elect a slate of officers pledged to a change in the character of the Club, a signal would go forth, a sort of fiery torch, and, Lo! there would be such a rallying that on election day the insurgents were overwhelmed.

These charter members were as sturdy and miscellaneous a group as, in fact, any selection of newspapermen might be, for the profession attracts many and diverse types. They ranged in age from Franklin Pierce Morgan who must be named as the senior inasmuch as he insisted he was the first white child born in the District of Columbia, to Caryll N. Odell, a cub on the Washington Herald, who was barely 18 years old. Col. Frank Morgan was the Beau Brummell of the Washington Corps of Correspondents, a short ramrod of a man always impeccably clad.

Someday, perhaps, a separate book will be written solely about these Charter Members just as books have been written devoted to the Signers of the Declaration of Independence. There was Col. John McElroy, an active member by virtue of his editorship and, indeed, ownership of The National Tribune, the organ of the Grand Army of the Republic, which he had founded soon after the close of the Civil War.

He flourished and passed away long before the advent of Bruce Catton who, perhaps, might be regarded as having been born to take his place. For not a luncheon or dinner hour at the Club passed without Col. MeElroy devoting the period to some campaign. He had been attached to a cavalry regiment in Missouri and, unquestionably, he was firmly of the opinion that he had fought in every field, was present at every action. Nor must one forget another soldier member (although not a Charter Member). That was Gen. John Klem, the Drummer Boy of Shiloh. It was at Shiloh that a ten-year old drummer boy beat his drum through the heat of the battle. Many must remember the fanciful painting, long popular, of him carried on a soldier's shoulder, wielding his sticks. Gen. Grant heard of him through some war correspondent's story and when he became President, appointed him to West Point. Ah well! As Gen. John Klem scarcely more than five feet tall as an aging veteran, he, too, showed how fields were won at the Press Club!

Willis J. Abbot was one of this group of founders, an associate of William Jennings Bryan on The Commoner and destined to become the first managing editor of The Christian Science Monitor. The name of Samuel G. Blythe was known around the world for his long series in the Saturday Evening Post on Who's Who in Washington and for many other writings. Scott Bone, founder of the Washington Herald and later governor of Alaska was one of them. Thomas W. Brahany bloc for long has attached to Milwaukee Sentinel and New York Post staffs was among them and so was Ralph (Spike) Collins of the Washington Times, Thomas Kirby of the Washington Herald, Donald Craig of the New York Herald, and Eddie Hood of the Associated Press who, according to legend, wrote for President Theodore Roosevelt the famous ultimatum to the Sultan of Morocco: "We want Perdicaris alive or Raissuli dead."

Robert W. Woolley who, in the Wilson Administration became Director of the Mint and, still later, served a long term as a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission was among the Charter members and so was Judson C. Welliver who became right hand man to President Warren G. Harding, Franklin K. Lane Secretary of the Interior in the Wilson Administration was one of the group and so was the eminent Dr. Harvey Wiley, author of the Pure Food and Drug Act. J. Hampton Moore, Member of Congress and Mayor of Philadelphia and John Barrett, the first Director of the Pan American Union were on the list. There is hardly a name to which history does not cling.

Someone in such a membership could attract to the Club almost anyone desired. For example, when the Bell Telephone Co. was ready to announce that the first trans-continental telephone communication was ready, it was at the Club that the first call was completed. William Jennings Bryan, Secretary of State, made the call from the lounge, in company with members and distinguished guests, on January 26, 1915. The first tentative experiments with television were made there and, under Club auspices at Keith's Theatre, on the ground floor of the Albee Building, the first talking pictures, a combination of the Edison phonograph and motion pictures were exhibited. The lack or synchronization produced mixed amusement and chagrin. It was much later that the sound track was perfected.

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