By BARBARA BRYANT
When he was in his 70s, Ernest Griffith spent much of his time scaling mountain peaks in Alaska. Not satisfied with attaining these lofty heights, he went on, in his 80s and 90s, to tackle the Cascades in Washington.
"Every summer, he'd climb a mountain," recalled Charles Goodrum, one of many Library of Congress staffers who worked under Mr. Griffith in what was then called the Legislative Reference Service. "And he didn't stop until he'd checked off every mountain on this continent and many in Europe."
To many who knew Mr. Griffith, these feats illustrate perfectly the energy and perseverance he brought to his impressive history of precedent-setting service in academia and government.
Mr. Griffith assumed the post of director of the Library's newly formed Legislative Reference Service (now called Congressional Research Service) in 1940 at the behest of Congress. He held this post for 18 years, masterminding its growth as a vital conduit of information and expert analysis for members of Congress and their staffs.
The service's role can best be summed up in an excerpt from the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Appropriation Act of 1915: "to employ competent persons to gather, classify and make available … [pertinent] data for or bearing upon legislation, and to render such data serviceable to Congress and committees and members thereof." After retiring from the Legislative Reference Service (LRS), Mr. Griffith returned to American University, where he had served as an educator and administrator before coming to the Library. In the fall of 1958, he became the first dean of the University's School of International Service.
In August 1958 members of Congress lined up on the floor of the House and Senate to praise his achievements in founding and nurturing LRS. Former Rep. Omar T. Burleson (D-Texas) saluted the honoree for establishing LRS, which included a "consulting service" for members, consisting of experts in many fields who were qualified to offer expert information and history on specific issues facing Congress.
In honoring Mr. Griffith by name, Congress recognized his ability to spearhead the implementation of the 1946 Legislative Reorganization Act. This act established the Legislative Reference Service as a separate department within the Library, increased the appropriations for the service and allowed LRS to hire experts on many issues from the government and beyond to inform on a broad range of legislative issues.
"Until the end of World War II, LRS was strictly a legal unit, designed to track and provide information on laws and the legislative progress of bills," explained Charles Goodrum, who served as assistant director and research coordinator of the Congressional Research Service from 1950 to 1980. He referred to the legislators' concern over their heavy dependence on information sources provided by - and, therefore, ostensibly primarily loyal to - the Executive Branch. "The members wanted to free themselves from the influence of these experts, from the government bureaus in town and the influence of the lobbyists," he explained. "They wanted to bring in their own collection of experts - well-informed sources they could trust and call on at any time for help."
As a result, Mr. Griffith worked to recruit specialists in Social Security, transportation, tax issues and other key areas from state government, other federal agencies and universities. In all, 30 distinct specialties were represented. Many were lured to LRS by relatively the high salaries that the 1946 Congressional Reorganization Act authorized the service to pay. More than one prestigious new employee brought entire staffs and other experts to join LRS.
"The service's policy was to offer congressional requesters a huge amount of expert, well-balanced information, all of the pros and cons on every issue," Mr. Goodrum said. "If someone wanted to know what it would take to build an interstate highway system, LRS could tell them how many miles the road network would cover, where it would go and how much money the project would cost."
He added that the LRS director viewed the responsibility to provide expert, balanced information to Congress not as a job but as a patriotic and moral mission. "Mr. Griffith was a vigorous Methodist minister," Mr. Goodrum pointed out. "He believed passionately that the executive branch should not dominate government, as it did at that time, but that all three branches should have equal influence."
Clearly, the director viewed the provision of complete, accurate and balanced information to Congress as an essential tool and as a crucial means of helping the body achieve this parity. In an Aug. 3, 1958, Washington Post article, Mr. Griffith said, "I think I am proudest of the fact that we have operated independently of the executive branch in a technical age.
"In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Congress was becoming more and more dependent on the executive for its know-how," the outgoing director continued. "What we have done is make possible the intelligent functioning of the legislative branch without reliance on the executive arm or special interests."
He also broke new ground by creating a new and expanded role for LRS, one that Congress came to count on heavily, as it continues to do today. Under Mr. Griffith, LRS undertook to help members respond to constituents' requests for information on legislative issues, government programs and even current events of concern to members and the electorate. According to the Washington Post article, in 1958 the service responded to almost 70,000 questions. Mr. Goodrum recalled the number of congressional requests during his tenure at the Library growing quickly, from "500 to 1,500 to 2,000 per day."
This increase in demand for information caused the service to mushroom. The Post reported that by its 18th year in existence, "Griffith [had] seen the staff grow from 40 to 200 and the annual budget increase from $9,500 to $1,300,000. And in that time the number of requests [had] tripled." Today, in its 82nd year, the Congressional Research Service (as LRS was renamed in 1970), responds to almost 600,000 requests.
A brief overview of his career shows that Mr. Griffith was highly qualified to carry out LRS's fledgling mission. After receiving an A.B. degree at Hamilton College, he was appointed a Rhodes scholar and received his Ph.D. degree from Oxford University. He served as associate professor of political science at Syracuse University, followed by a stint as visiting professor at Harvard University. He then returned to Syracuse to become a dean and taught government. Mr. Griffith arrived at the Library in 1940, after having served as dean of American University's graduate school since 1935, where he had also taught political science.
Also a published author, Mr. Griffith wrote several books on government, including The Modern Government in Action (1942), Congress: Its Contemporary Role (1951) and The American System of Government (1953). He served as editor and co-author of Research in Political Science (1948) and co-editor of the Congressional Anthology (1955). He retired from the Library on Sept. 15, 1958.
Of his former supervisor's role in LRS, Mr. Goodrum recalled the director's impressive activism that set into motion the service's decades-long evolution from "a small research unit" into its current "vigorous role in the legislative branch." He credits Mr. Griffith for laying an essential and unshakable foundation for the service's essential contributions to Congress, an achievement that continues to win praise from members long after its architect had left the scene. "Mr. Griffith built LRS into an organization that Congress has come to trust and rely on wholeheartedly for its accuracy and objectivity," Mr. Goodrum noted. "The organization he built has strengthened the legislative branch enormously.
"I think it is important to note the role that 'service' plays in the life of Ernest Griffith," said Daniel P. Mulhollan, current director of CRS. "To serve the public good has been a fundamental purpose that Ernest Griffith has continually called us to: service to the Congress and to the nation."
Barbara Bryant is a Washington free-lance writer.