Senator-Reject

Into the Senate chamber shortly before noon one day last week limped William Scott Vare, Senator-suspect from Pennsylvania. His left side paralyzed, he leaned on a cane and the arm of his Philadelphia physician.

Into a much-disputed Senate seat--front row on the aisle--he gingerly lowered himself. On his florid face was a grim grin. He was sitting, if not "seated.'' in the Senate.

Fifteen minutes later, still grinning grimly, he arose and went limping out of the chamber, a Senator-reject from Pennsylvania. In the interval the Senate had refused (58 to 22) to accept him as a member because he and his friends had spent $785,000 to win the Republican nomination in the May 1926 primary.* To some Mr. Vare had been lynched, the Constitution shaken. To others the Senate had righteously purged itself of an evil influence.

Two days prior Mr. Vare had hobbled into the Senate chamber to make his first and last defense. Excerpts:

"The charges made against me so preyed upon my mind that I trembled upon the very edge of eternity./- . . . I never stole an election. . . . How unfair and unjust my accusers have been in attempting to twist mere clerical irregularities and technicalities into acts of political fraud and conspiracy! . . .

Hushed and solemn was the Senate chamber when the final Vare vote came. In the gallery sat William Bauchop Wilson, onetime (1913-21) Secretary of Labor Democratic contestant for the Vare seat. . . . . Before the roll call was finished, Vare was hobbling out of the room. Blind Senator Schall of Minnesota groped his way to him, embraced him consolingly. In his ears rang bells for a roll call that would dismiss (66 to 15) the Wilson contest.

About the Senate flew reports that Governor John S. Fisher of Pennsylvania would appoint arch-lobbyist Joseph R. Grundy to the empty seat. Warned Senator Nye of North Dakota: "I give notice here and now that the appointee of Governor Fisher will need be one far removed from the Mellon-Grundy-Fisher machine before I shall vote for him to be seated. We cannot damn one ill-smelling Pennsylvania machine without damning the other."

At Harrisburg Governor Fisher retorted: ''I was shown a statement by a certain Senator better known for his voice than for his statesmanship. Well, all I say to that Senator who intends to oppose anything the Governor of Pennsylvania does is that he reminds me of an antimire* talking to a lot of jumbo elephants. . . . Somebody harbors a fear of a man named Grundy. Some of the criticisms have sounded like the malicious gossip of women. . . . So long as I am governor I intend to uphold our state and I would fail in my duty if I let the threat of any Senator dictate the selection."

*In the same primary onetime Senator George Wharton Pepper spent $1,804,979, onetime Governor Gifford Pinchot, $187,029, vainly seeking the senatorial nomination. The Senate set a moral limit for campaign expenditures in 1922 when it seated Truman Hanly Newberry of Michigan, condemned his political use of $196,000 as excessive.

/-He had a stroke of apoplexy in August 1928.

*Obsolete diminutive of ant, current only among elder Pennsylvania Dutch.

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