Sitting of the Seventy-Second

One bright noon last week two spanking new U. S. flags were run up freshly painted poles on opposite ends of the U. S. Capitol.

To many a weather eye they looked like storm warnings. They marked the first sitting of the 72nd Congress, chosen 13 months ago. The flag over the Senate fluttered for a 40-min. session before being hauled down for the day. The one over the House flew for 2 hr. 24 min. Together they will continue to float and flap in the soft, Washington air until next May or June, while in the chambers below a wild and tumultuous session moves forward as a political prelude to the 1932 campaign for President.

In the Senate the opening was as august as the most august Senator could desire. On his high chair Vice President Curtis sat and hoped he would still be there two years hence. After prayers new Senators were sworn in in bunches of eight. Senator Hattie Caraway of Arkansas could not bear to hear her husband's death announced in the chamber, so she stayed in her office, her eyes teary. Senator William Warren Barbour of New Jersey (see p. 15) refrained from taking the oath for one day out of respect to his predecessor, the late Dwight Whitney Morrow. Huey Pierce Long was too busy being Governor and political boss of Louisiana to go to Washington and take his Senate seat.

Old Guardsmen, nominally in control of the Senate (Republicans: 48; Democrats: 47; Farmer Laborite: 1) looked glum and worried. They knew they were in for a long, losing battle. The Insurgents, more than ever before, held the balance of power. From last week's Republican conference at which Senator Watson was again chosen floor leader and Senator Fess "Whip," the Insurgents pointedly absented themselves.

In the House a Historic attendance record was made when 433 members out of the elected 434 (in New Hampshire remains one vacancy) appeared for the opening session. Only absentee: Republican J. Will Taylor of Tennessee, convalescing from an appendectomy. In his trim cutaway William Tyler Page, who has served as the bald and brown Republican Clerk of the House since 1919, mounted the rostrum with a heavy heart, called to order the session he knew would cost him his job. Before him on the floor were almost a hundred new faces. They were the New Guard of first-term members, "the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker," the plain people incarnate. Clerk Page had, as he always does, conducted a sort of legislative school for them earlier in the week in the House caucus room (see cut). There he expounded parliamentary law, told them how to introduce bills, warned them to address only the Speaker, initiated them into the fiction of the Congressional Record's "Extension of Remarks."

After prayers and a roll call by States beginning "Alabama--McDuffie," Democrat John Nance Garner of Texas was nominated for the Speakership amid party whoops and rebel yells. Put up against him was Republican Bertrand Snell of New York (TIME, Dec. 7). The vote: Garner, 218; Snell: 207; Schneider, a Wisconsin Insurgent: 5. None of the three voted for himself. With the House, now Democratic for the first time in twelve years, standing and cheering, Speaker Garner in a brown-speckled suit was ceremoniously led up the new blue carpet to the rostrum, duly installed. With one autocratic sweep he swore in the whole House membership at once. Other Democratic elections: Henry Thomas Rainey of Illinois, Majority Leader; South Trimble of Kentucky, House Clerk; Kenneth Romney of Montana, Sergeant-at-Arms. Rules revision was temporarily postponed as some 5,000 legislative proposals were plopped into the bill basket.

In the Plaza, meanwhile, were congregated some 1,600 "hunger marchers" who had trucked into the capital from the North and Mid-West by Communist leaders for demonstration purposes (TIME, Dec. 7). These tatterdemalions, a forlorn, hollow-eyed crew of whites and blacks, paraded under police escort singing:

Let us march, let us march

Let us march to Capitol Hill

To fight, to fight

For an employment insurance bill.

About the Capitol machine guns were nested in high nooks and corners. Policemen carried rifles and tear bombs. An ambulance stood ready in the background. Washington's Superintendent of Police Glassford, smoking a long pipe, dashed about on a motorcycle. When the marchers reached the Capitol plaza they were encircled by police. Except for these jeers and songs, all was peace and order. A committee led by Herbert Benjamin was permitted to enter the Capitol. Benjamin started to push into the Senate chamber. Sergeant-at-Arms Barry blocked his way.

Benjamin: I want to get inside to deliver a copy of this bill.

Barry: I can't let you in.

Benjamin: But I have a petition to present.

Barry: This is the wrong day for petitions.

Benjamin: Anyway, this is the day the unemployed have chosen.

With that, Benjamin and his committee started to shove inside. Police pushed them back with their shoulders, ejected them from the Capitol.

The "hunger marchers" went to the White House, were peaceably turned away at its gates. They ended their demonstration in front of the American Federation of Labor office, there to bedevil President William Green.

Though Congress ignored the "hunger marchers," the problem they represented was No. 1 on the Congressional Work Calendar.

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