Ever since TIME'S first issue (March 3, 1923), which reported the adjournment of the 67th Congress and a review of its work, TIME has paid particular attention to the nation's legislative body in Washington. Last week, as the second session of the 83rd Congress got down to business, TIME reporters were again busy "working the Hill." The regular TIME reporters covering the Hill this year are James L. McConaughy Jr. and John L. Steele. In the 15 years he has been with TIME, McConaughy has been a writer. Chicago correspondent, deskman in the news bureau, bureau chief in Ottawa (where he spent 3 1/2 years "watching the other form of democratic government work--the parliamentary system of Canada") and TIME'S bureau chief in Seattle. He has covered Congress for TIME since 1951. "I still remember my first day on the Hill," he says. "I got blisters just running up mileage.

Even now a daily average is about five miles of corridor pounding." Reporter Steele, a Nieman fellow and one of the Capitol's seasoned wire-service reporters, came to TIME during the last session of Congress after a nine-year career of covering the Hill for the United Press. Shortly after he came to TIME, Steele grew used to a question from wire-service friends in the press gallery: "Now that you have a weekly deadline, have you been able to slow down?" He found himself, says Steele, forced to answer: "I'm just beginning to rev up." Congress sets a fast pace for its watchful reporters. McConaughy once described the job as "trying to report six fires going simultaneously, each one threatening to get out of control, and watching 19 different fire-engine companies come roaring to the scene. Then, just as the wind rises, you get a message saying that what the editors really want to know is the amount of property damage and also a complete biography and personality sketch of the arsonist." Actually, says McConaughy, the number of Congressmen a reporter talks to each day is not necessarily significant. "One day you may spend six hours in the House lobby just fishing and shooting the breeze and talk to 30 of them and get nothing. The next day one phone call will result in a story." What is important is whom reporters get to know. TIME'S reporters consider it a good rule of thumb to get to know all the Senators, as many of the 435 Representatives as possible. "It is particularly important in the House," says McConaughy, "to know one top Democrat and one top Republican on each committee and one from each state delegation. That way you always have a place to begin, no matter how offbeat the story may be." It also provides a barometer of national thinking.

Between the Senate Office Building and the Old House Office Building a reporter can take the pulse of Wyoming, check the price of Texas cattle, learn what is troubling Wisconsin's Menominee Indians, get background on Mississippi politics--all by spending enough time with the right people on Capitol Hill.

In addition to the blow-by-blow, bill-by-bill reporting of Congress, Correspondents McConaughy and Steele give TIME'S editors the background on the stories, the explanation of why something happened the way it did, or what may be expected to happen in the future. ("One thing we avoid." they say, "is the field of pure prediction, which we leave to the columnists.") One thing Correspondent McConaughy can predict, however, is his usual preferential treatment at the beginning of. a Congress, when many of the elevator operators and Capitol policemen are new on their jobs. McConaughy. 38, and a big six-footer with a shock of grey hair, is often mistaken for a Congressman himself. For a few days he enjoys the luxury of a cop stopping traffic and waving him through a red light, or an elevator operator whisking him directly to the floor he wants. Then he becomes an ordinary correspondent again, pounding his marble-floored beat and listening to debate.

Cordially yours,

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