Red Ears, Next Support

Red Ears, Red Support

Chairman Robert L. Doughton last week kept the members of his House Ways & Means Committee with their ears to the grindstone. Their job was to listen strenuously, so that no one could complain that he had been denied a hearing on the New Deal's plan to rearrange corporation taxes in order to encourage the declaration of dividends (TiME, March 16, et seq).

Relatively few complainants asked to be heard. The railroads as a group, the National Association of Manufacturers and several trade associations complained, but no nationally known firms. No famed industrialists protested. Some businessmen thought the tax bill was sound in aim. Many considered it half-baked but relatively harmless. Some expected to profit by it. And most of those who expected to be pinched by higher taxes were either resigned to their fate or convinced of the uselessness of complaint. Therefore only twice during last week's hearings were committee ears held close enough to the grindstone to be rubbed red by its rough contact.

Into the committee room marched a clownish young man named William N. McNair, a Democrat but no New Dealer, who loudly announced: "Well. I'm Mayor of Pittsburgh. I've come down to discuss the tax bill as it affects our city. You've taken a lot of money out of Pittsburgh. This bill has a new name, but it means that more money is coming to Washington from Pittsburgh than came before. . . . You already take $100,000,000 a year from our city. If you pass this law, a lot more money will come to Washington.... Don't tax the shirts off our backs. . . .

"I don't beg, I demand that this new tax be not imposed. Why, the whole city government [of Pittsburgh] only costs $41,000,000. And the people get something for that money. If you prevent corpora tions in Pittsburgh from laying up reserves, what will happen to us if another flood comes along? . . ." A Democratic committeeman began to read a list of $536,000,000 of Federal funds allotted to Pennsylvania. Mayor McNair went right on talking. Roared Chairman Doughton : "Can't a member of Congress make a statement without your butting in?" "Well, he interrupted me." Chairman Doughton, mad clean through, hammered with his gavel : "If the gentleman can't treat the committee with courtesy, we'll have him removed from the room." "I'm the Mayor of a great city, and I have a right to come down here and say what I think." "You've got to be courteous to this committee. . . . Can't somebody call a police man?" "Why all this dignity?" snorted Mayor McNair. "Goodnight!" and out he marched before a Capitol policeman in the back of the room could reach him. Two days later Chairman Doughton came to the name of the last witness on the day's schedule, Max Bedacht, representing the Communist Party. "The next witness," announced Chairman Doughton, "is--" and then made an utterly incomprehensible sound out of the German name. When nobody answered. Chairman Doughton declared the hearing adjourned. A plump, elderly little man who had been seated all day in the rear of the room went forward apologetically to the com mittee table, asked whether his name had been reached, said he was Max Bedacht. Hastily the Committee reconvened. Max Bedacht was not the kind of frowsy, self-assertive Communist most Congressmen were accustomed to encountering. Born in Munich 52 years ago, he was a factory worker, a Socialist, a Communist, an editor of various defunct radical periodicals, and is now a member of the Central Committee of the U. S. Communist Party. He still retains the good manners which he learned during his youth as a barber in Switzerland. "How much time will you take?'' asked Mr. Doughton. "I have six pages--two minutes a page. . . ." "Proceed." "I am here," began Mr. Bedacht, "to present the position of the Communist Party on the proposals adopted by your committee for new Federal taxes. We Communists have always fought for the principle of taxing corporate surpluses and undivided corporation income. This would be at least a step in the direction of shifting the present heavy burden of taxation from the shoulders of workers, farmers and small consumers to the big corporations and the rich." Democratic Committee members squirmed uncomfortably at this unexpected support. An alert Republican eagerly interrupted the witness: "This plan that you are presenting here is in harmony with this bill?" "We agree with the principle," declared Mr. Bedacht and went on to explain that the Communists thought the bill was fine, only they wanted to go further. When he cited Democrat Robert H. Jackson of the Bureau of Internal Revenue on the taxation of millionaires, the Republican committeeman again cut in: "You quite agree with what Mr. Jackson had to say about this, do you not?" "Yes," said amiable Communist Bedacht. By the time his statement was finished, the Democrats were sickly aware of what had happened: The Communists had in principle joined the New Deal on the tax bill. Hastily Mr. Bedacht was cross-examined in an effort to prove that he really opposed many features of the bill.

"You are against about everything in it," declared Chairman Doughton. "Then you could not be for it, could you?"

"Well," said Mr. Bedacht, his friendliness unshaken, "we are for it in addition to the old taxes."

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