The Dead Congress

Businessmen rejoice as the 53rd Congress comes to an end and the Republican 54th Congress is instituted.

The passing into history of the Democratic Fifty-third congress has been received with satisfaction over the entire country. The 54th Congress is republican in both of its branches and this may account for the rejoicing. The scene in the New York Stock Exchange which is so vividly described in the following telegraphic dispatch is a specimen of the feeling of jubilation which prevailed at all business centres:

New York, March 4. – As the hands of the big clock of the New York Stock Exchange pointed to the noon hour today there occurred on the floor a scene but seldom witnessed there. Old and staid brokers danced like schoolboys and gave vent to bloodcurdling yells. Some clapped their hands, their faces wreathed in smiles. Others blew shrill whistles with which they had evidently come provided. The younger brokers threw their hats high in the air, and in some cases other fellows’ hats.
“The 53d Congress is done,” was the cry. It told story. The brokers were celebrating a great and joyous event, each in his own way. For two minutes after 12 the tremendous noise made by scores and scores of men continued. At first the whistles predominated, and then came a mighty chorus of groans, it swelled and grumbled. As it died away the celebration ended, although it was fully five minutes before regular business, which had been suspended during the demonstration, was in swing as before.
Occasionally an exhuberant broker, even while making his bid or offer, would let forth an Indian war whoop, or a belated hoot or cat call. The demonstration was the noisiest the Stock Exchange has ever indulged in over an adjournment of Congress.
It was especially noticeable for its unanimity, the brokers apparently laying all the bad business and financial depression of the two years at the door of the dead Congress. They had bided their time, and when the time came they showed publicly what they had felt and talked of privately for months. The visitors’ gallery was crowded during the demonstration.
The jubilation over the adjournment of Congress was duplicated [illegible] the Produce Exchange, thought on a smaller scale than on the Stock Exchange. There was a cheering and whistling, and groaning and congratulations.

God Grant that we may never gaze upon the like of the expiring Congress again.

“The Dead Congress,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed January 18, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1373.