Where Do Senators Go?

A watchful eye was caught last week by a name on a sign in a realty subdivision on the outskirts of Washington, D. C. The sign said to consult your own broker or

JOSEPH L. BRISTOW

The bell which that name rings in the mind has not pealed since 1915, when Joseph Little Bristow ceased to be a U. S. Senator from Kansas after six tempestuous years. In the mild-mannered gentleman who now farms and sells lots on the outskirts of Washington it is hard to find the bristle-lipped, bead-eyed, frock-coated orator of 15 years ago of whom it was said (then) that "no man better personifies the insurgent spirit of Kansas." He helped split the Republican Party for Theodore Roosevelt. Of the Six Irreconcilables (the others were Senators La Follette, Cummins, Beveridge, Dolliver, Clapp) he, a veritable Irate Citizen out of some political cartoon, was the hardest worker. "The intensity of John Brown of Ossawatomie and the shrewdness of Vidocq, the French detective," were his. Now, surrounded by silos and shrubbery, he is a peaceable country gentleman with only a "La Follette Avenue" running through his subdivision to recall the stirring past.

Where do most Senators go from the Senate? People often wonder. Some, of course, stay in the public-eye--Atlee Pomerene of Ohio by being oil scandals lawyer (see p. 12); Elihu Root by continuing as a patriarch of the bar; Chauncey Depew by becoming a nonagenarian. Others become somewhat obscure. James Duval Phelan is an opulent San Francisco booster & developer. Magnus Johnson still farms the Minnesota dirt whence sprouted his short fame. Dr. Irwin France of Maryland travels and keeps up his interest in Guernsey cows. Truman Handy Newberry of Michigan keeps up his club memberships, helps direct banks, goes yachting. John Sharp Williams prunes the gardenias and oversees the cotton planting at his old Mississippi home, infrequently sallying forth to signalize some state occasion with his mellifluency.

Onetime U. S. Senators are plentiful everywhere -- except in New England. Within the past four years, Death (as it must to all men) came to Senators Colt (aged 78) of Rhode Island, Brandegee (aged 60) of Connecticut, Lodge (aged 74) of Massachusetts, Fernald (aged 68) of Maine, and Dillingham (aged 79) of Vermont.