Picked Chicken

For the first time in U. S. history last week a Congress elected in November began its first regular session in January instead of in the December following. Reason: the 20th Amendment to the Constitution adopted to make the legislative branch of the Government more quickly responsive to the popular will as registered at the polls. Vice President John Nance Garner gaveled to order a Senate which contained not one lame duck. Nebraska's old weary-faced Senator George William Norris, whose 20th Amendment outlawed defeated Congress men from the Capitol, looked and saw what was indeed a lame-duckless session. He shook his head sadly and murmured: "It looks like a picked chicken."

It was not the session that he thus described, however, but the sight of the Republican half of the Senate Chamber where stood his desk and 26 others. Crowded together across the aisle were 69 desks for 69 Senate Democrats. But the majority will not be able to muster 69 Democratic votes until after June 19 when West Virginia's Rush Dew Holt celebrates his 30th birthday and thereby becomes constitutionally eligible to be sworn in and take his Senate seat (see P-13)

The first week's work of the Senate consisted of swearing in members elected or re-elected two months ago, and telling the President it was ready to start work.

Not quite so brief was the first session of the House. All but eight of its 322 Democrats, 102 Republicans, seven Progressives and three Farmer-Laborites were present for the first roll call, babbling, backslapping, leading their children about the floor, waving to their wives in the galleries, trying out the new spittoons. First job for the House was to elect Tennessee's Joseph Wellington Byrns to be Speaker. vice Henry T. Rainey, deceased. They did it with a cheer (see below). Their next job was to change their rules. They did it without blinking an eye (see below).

Organized as the 74th Congress, the Senate and House proceeded to open their marching orders. In joint session, with the Cabinet sitting among them, below galleries jammed with diplomats and famed ladies (Mrs. Roosevelt's party of guests exceeded the dimensions of the Presidential box, overflowed into the gallery aisles), the Congressmen listened to President Roosevelt report on the State of the Union (see col. I). Three days later, like good soldiers, they listened to their first detailed instructions in his budget message (see p. 16).

Congressional greenhorns harked credulously to hopeful talk of a "short session," with adjournment in April or May. Older, wiser heads, however, knew that the House and Senate would probably sit through until late June or July--could, in legal fact, under the 20th Amendment, continue their session right up to Jan. 3, 1936.

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