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also developed a friendship with Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn who was equally devoted to the Capitol and its history. As Fred retold the story, one Saturday morning over breakfast in the House restaurant he had been lamenting the lack of a historical society when Rayburn interrupted, "By damn, let's do something about it." It was from that abrupt but pragmatic suggestion that the July 17, 1962 meeting later developed. Representative Schwengel opened the meeting by reading from a prepared statement on the impor- tance of the Capitol and its history. In concluding the statement he touched upon the need for a historical society: It seems to me that the millions of people, adult and youth, who come here need somehow to be helped while they are here to catch something of the fire that burned in the hearts of those who walked and talked in these halls . . . It seems to me that we must try to do a better job of educating our people on these things. Representative Marguerite Stitt Church of Illinois then moved that an organization, either chartered as a non-profit group under the laws of the District of Columbia or chartered by act of Congress, be estab- lished "for the purpose of presenting information about the Capitol and the work done therein." The resolution was unanimously approved, as was a motion by Dr. Richard Howland of the Smithsonian Institution to name the organization the United States Capitol Historical Society. Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona, who was present, was named 3 THE CAPITOL DOME honorary chairman, and Rep. Schwengel was appointed chairman of a steering committee to pres- ent recommendations on the form of the permanent organization and its officers and objectives. In the ensuing weeks the founders of this fledg- ling endeavor reached decisions that would shape the future of the organization. A membership committee meeting on July 26, 1962, addressed the basic question of financing—would the Society be self-supporting or would it rely upon congres- sional appropriations? The memorandum of the meeting records their decision: "It is the sense of your Committee that the objectives of the Society could best be achieved if it were self-supporting." The recommendation to avoid government subsi- dization had originated earlier from conversations with Senator Hubert Humphrey, who had argued that congressional funding would jeopardize the Society's nonprofit status and its independence of action. The membership committee believed that the Society could be privately financed through a combination of grants, membership fees, and sales receipts. At the organization's second meeting on July 31, the question of annual versus lifetime membership dues was debated. Helen Bullock from the National Trust for Historical Preservation recommended annual dues, as did Melvin Payne of the National Geographic Society (NGS), who reasoned that annualmemberships would create "amore dynamic, active organization." Although the minutes do not record a vote on this question, the Society adopted a policy of lifetime memberships and established several classifications with dues as low as one dollar. It was Representative Schwengel's belief that the Society belonged to all the people and should be as open as possible to the widest participation. In a statement inserted in the Congressional Record, Representative Robert R. Barry of New York explained the Society's unique concept of membership: Mr. Speaker, the Capitol Historical Soci- ety, by the will of those who created it and the Constitution already adopted that now governs it, proposes to become the most open, the most integrated, the numerically largest, and the most democratic society of men, women and children in the world and, very likely, in the history of societies. In fact we shall consider ourselves 100 percent organized only when, under certain respec- tive categories, we shall have attained a possible membership of 187 million people, or when we shall have enlisted as members the total population of the United States. . . . We are to be, of course, a nonprofit soci- ety, financed not through Federal appropri- ation, but through grants from private funds and through subscriptions deliberately planned to be modest and widely attractive. . . . For we want the people of the United States, all our people everywhere, to be themselves learners and scholars, teachers and missionaries of their own great and remarkable history. The Articles of Incorporation were adopted at a meeting held on August 28, 1962. The key provi- SPRING 2012