Old Twins

The U. S. Senate last week by a vote of 57 to 26 disposed of two old constitutional questions in such a way that they may never again arise to plague another balky Congress. They were: 1) the 1930 census; 2) reapportionment of the House of Representatives.

These twin matters were neatly twined into one substantial measure which provided not only for the next census and reapportionment but also set up the machinery for automatically executing these mandates of the Constitution in the future without further Congressional action.

The House prepared to take up and pass this legislation in its customary jig time.

Census: The ordinary Senator or Congressman of the party in power is interested in counting U. S. noses every decade because of the patronage he expects to get out of it. Some 100,000 jobs are at stake.

Republican politicians were anticipating the 1930 census with relish when the Senate last fortnight voted 42 to 37 to put all census employes under Civil Service. This proposal, sponsored by New York's Senator Wagner, rallied his Democratic colleagues and enough insurgent Republicans to wreck, at least temporarily, the G. O. P.'s delight in census legislation.

The regular Republicans grumped about overburdening the Civil Service Commission with unnecessary work and prayed that the House would knock this "reform" provision out of the bill. It remained for a Democratic Senator, South Carolina's Blease, to put into words their true sentiments about this innovation.

Said Senator Blease: "The Civil Service is the most damnable, the most iniquitous system ever perpetrated upon a free country. I believe to the victors belong the spoils. ... If North Carolina, Virginia, Texas and Florida want to go Republican, let them have Republican census-takers. ... If that is the company they want to keep and they happen to get up with fleas on 'em, let 'em bite 'em."

Reapportionment. Twice since 1920 had the House passed legislation to reapportion itself and twice had the Senate failed to act. The Senate's passage of this reapportionment measure was the first in 18 years. The Senate bill largely copied the House bill of the last session (TIME, Jan. 21).

Under its terms the House would keep its present size--435 members--and readjustments of representation would be automatically made by the executive branch of the government on the basis of the new census figures, if the Congress failed to act promptly.

Chief advocates of reapportionment were: Senator Hiram Warren Johnson of California (which stands to gain six House seats); Senator Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg of Michigan (which stands to gain four seats). Futile filibusters against reapportionment, were Senators Harrison of Mississippi (which stands to lose two seats); Black of Alabama and Swanson of Virginia (their states would lose one seat each).

To Senator Vandenberg went the public credit of insistently driving this measure through a reluctant Senate. It was his first major activity since coming to the Senate a year ago. Born in Grand Rapids 45 years ago, at the age of 22 Senator Vandenberg became the editor-publisher of the Grand Rapids Herald, a position he held until he became a Senator. A bookish man behind large spectacles, he writes with more force than he speaks. His speeches in behalf of reapportionment in the Senate were marked with more constitutional zeal than oratorical brilliance. His chief address brimmed with these phrases: "The spirit of the Constitution," "The integrity and equity of the House," "an outrage upon the Constitution," "A solemn, sober challenge to the American conscience," "self-government crumbles..."