Abuse, Rout, Surrender

A big white flag was run up over the Republican ramparts on the tariff battlefield in the Senate last week, but the Democratic and Progressive Republican warriors, their honor stung by vile names hurled at them across the trenches, refused to cease firing.

Surrender. Exhausted by his long losing fight, Generalissimo Reed Smoot wearily hoisted the truce flag and in a thin voice announced his terms of surrender. Admitting that he and his Old Guardsmen were beaten, he said: "The Senate should take a recess. . . . Let the coalition agree upon amendments. . . . Let the vote be taken in the Senate upon the amendments without a word of discussion and let us pass a bill." What he proposed, in effect, was that the Democrats and Progressive Republicans should reframe the tariff bill in committee during recess, with the certainty that their majority could then pass it immediately without debate.

But no such terms were acceptable to Democratic Field Marshal Simmons and Freebooting General Borah. They smiled contemptuously as they rejected the Smoot peace offer. They would continue to fight in the open where already their arms had brought such success.

Jackass. Disgruntled at their failure to win any tariff victories, Republican troopers took to sticking out their tongues at the enemy, calling them naughty names. First Major-General Reed of Pennsylvania referred to western senators as "worse than Communists." Then Lobbyist Grundy. also of Pennsylvania, called them representatives of "backward commonwealths" (TIME, Nov. 11). Last week came the crowning insult from the lips of swashbuckling General George Higgins Moses of New Hampshire. President Pro Tempore of the Senate.

In a speech to New England manufacturers in Washington he declared the insurgent Republicans opposing his Old Guard were "sons of the wild jackass."

General Moses took a fast train to Chicago as other Senate warriors loudly complained that he had reflected not only on the Insurgents but "on their mothers and fathers." General George Norris of Nebraska, seizing a handful of straw from some pottery in an exhibit (see below), waved it over his head and cried: "This packing is probably fodder for us wild jackasses."

By sheer coincidence, the Interstate Commerce Commission last week modified railroad freight rates on "horses, mules, burros and asses in carload lots" in the western trunkline territory.

Exhibit. Ancient is the Republican trick of bringing into the Senate Chamber during a tariff war an assortment of cheap imported articles to illustrate arguments on foreign cost, duty, selling price. In 1922 an elaborate display was set before the Senate when John Sharp Williams, onetime (1911-23) Senator from Mississippi, entered the chamber in an absent-minded mood. He fondled a large cloth monkey with a red tail. He wiggled a cuckoo clock so roughly that it crashed to the floor in ruins. Last week the Senate Chamber held another similar exhibition, including toy soldiers, a violin, an umbrella, a bird cage, salad bowls. Asked Senator Barkley of Kentucky: "By what authority have Kresge and Woolworth moved into this chamber?" Warrior Norris picked up a cornet, blew on it a long mocking blast. On the desk of Brigadier Brookhart, tattler on "Wall Street booze parties" was playfully set a large purple champagne bottle.