The House Week

Work Done. Last week the U. S. Representatives:

P: Passed a bill authorizing the Postmaster General to contract for transportation of mail into U. S. possessions and foreign countries by air; sent it to the Senate.

P: Passed a bill authorizing 10,000 silver half dollars commemorating the 150th anniversary of Captain Cook's discovery of Hawaii; sent it to the Senate.

P: Passed a bill sponsored by Chairman Butler of the Naval Affairs Committee to afford Gold Star Mothers and unremarried widows two-week trips (first class) to U. S. cemeteries in Europe at Government expense, any time within three years after July 1, 1928; sent it to the Senate.

P: Passed a bill raising Civil War widows' pensions to $40 per month (from $30); sent it to the Senate.

P: Passed a bill by Chairman Green of the Ways and Means Committee extending the time limit for War bonus applications to 1930; sent it to the Senate.

P: Passed a bill appropriating $39,781,535 to run the Municipal Government of the District of Columbia; sent it to the Senate.

Green Goes. It was an undemonstrative, quiet little man whom the House stood up and cheered one day last week. His small, tired face bore the wrinkles of 17 years on a judge's bench in Iowa and 17 more years at a Representative's desk in Washington. In the present Congress and the two preceding it he had sat as chairman when the Ways & Means Committee was pondering long, statistical revenue bills. He was William Raymond Green, lord high custodian of the prime principle for which-the Fathers fought--taxation with representation.

Now he had been "kicked upstairs." President Coolidge had appointed him to a vacancy in the U. S. Court of Claims for no better reason, it seemed, than that Mr. Green had chronically disagreed with Secretary Mellon's ideas on taxation, particularly the inheritance tax, which the Administration wants repealed. Mr. Green fought the repeal because he thought it would benefit only a small class of rich people; because he thought taxes on estates are too easily evaded when left to the States to levy*and because it irks him to see fortunes made in the West and taken East to be spent, enjoyed, inherited. Lately, however, Iowa has favored repealing the inheritance tax, too. Pressure from behind as well as above persuaded Mr. Green to accept a post which he refused last year. Awaiting the Senate's confirmation in his new office, Mr. Green told the House that "in the anticipated event there is much to regret in many ways."

Not regrettable were the new salary of $12,500 per annum (a $2.500 "raise" for a Representative) and the fact that the job would last a lifetime. In fact, Colyum-ist Frank Kent of the Baltimore Sun, who (when he is not Hoover-boosting) is forever dropping ironic flies into political ointments, wrote a piece called "The Green Boys Make Good." In this Mr. Green's salary rise was played up and people were reminded that last year some one --perhaps William R. Green--obtained the appointment of William R. Green Jr. to the U. S. Board of Tax Appeals, at $12,000 per annum. "That," wrote Colyumist Kent, "is certainly bringing them down with both barrels. These two jobs . . . come under the general classification of 'sweethearts'--a term understood by all politicians and sportsmen. In sheer juiciness they are not excelled by any plums on the Federal tree. . . ."

Mr. Green's successor as Ways & Means Chairman will be, by right of seniority, Representative Willis C. Hawley of Oregon, a tall, ponderous old gentleman with a mind like a cash register and an unflinching faith in all aspects of the Coolidge era.

Another patriarch--as patriarchs go in Ihe 70th Congress -- whose face may leave the House after this session, is snow-crowned Martin Barnaby Madden, 73-year-old Chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Mr. Madden's votes come from south Chicago, where Negroes live.

Elected and re-elected mechanically since 1905, he worries now because a group of race-proud newcomers in his dark district are confabulating about the election of one of themselves next autumn. Mr. Madden, whom Mayor William Hale ("Big

Bill") Thompson graciously forgives for having been born in England, was offered a nomination as Congressman-at-large but he declined, preferring to rely once more upon his oldtime Negro neighbors whose causes he took up years ago when they were an apologetic minority.

*The most "notorious" State for estate tax-dodging is Florida, which levies no inheritance tax and whither rich people may transfer their wealth and will it, to avoid taxation by their home States.