Last Words

"Before the adjournment of Congress, will you be good enough to extend to the Senate my regards and good wishes? I hope that during the coming months all of you will have a happy vacation."

This little note from the President, addressed to Mr. Garner, was read to the Senate last week. A few minutes later that body adjourned, ending a session which will be remembered in history less for what it accomplished than for a futile six-month rumpus over the Supreme Court.

Day before the end, Pennsylvania's Senator Joseph Guffey called at the White House. That evening he made a radio speech denouncing the three Senators who did most to defeat the President's plan to enlarge the Supreme Court. "Political ingratitude carries with it its own punishment both swift and effective," said Senator Guffey. As political ingrates sure to be defeated when they come up for reelection he named three Democrats, Wyoming's Joseph C. O'Mahoney, Nebraska's Edward R. Burke and Montana's Burton K. Wheeler. From Senator Guffey, a spokesman for the New Deal, this statement was not remarkable, but from Senator Guffey, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee whose job is to get Democratic Senators re-elected next year, it was dynamite. Next day, when the Senate came to order for the last time this year Senator Wheeler said:

"I feel highly honored, Mr. President, that the Senator from Pennsylvania has singled me out as one of three members of the Senate for the purpose of broadcasting a speech which everyone knows he did not write and which everyone knows he would not have dared to deliver on the floor of the Senate. . . ."

A Senate Rule prevents Senators from speaking "disrespectfully" of other Senators. When Wisconsin's La Follette objected that Senator Wheeler was breaking it, he was promptly silenced and Senator Wheeler continued:

". . . The Senator from Pennsylvania said with reference to me: 'The Montana Senator . . . will have to give to the people of the United States something more than academic argument in explanation of his broken promises.' Of course that statement means the Senator from Montana lied. . . ."

Sitting in the back row, Senator Guffey listened with careful unconcern to the Wheeler vituperation, but when Wyoming's O'Mahoney began to speak his face turned gradually bright red with rage. Said Senator O'Mahoney:

". . . I say here in the presence of the gentleman who spoke on the radio last night and in the presence of those Democrats who are likely to be candidates for office in 1938, the sooner we get that man out of the position he now occupies by virtue of the acquiescence of his fellows, the better it will be for the Democratic party. . . ." Later, when a petition to remove Senator Guffey as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was being circulated, Senator Barkley revealed he had submitted his resignation a week before.

When Senator Guffey had heard Senator Burke call his radio speech "cheap stuff, tawdry stuff;" when West Virginia's Rush Dew Holt had called him the ally of "bosses and corruptionists" and when Senator Wheeler, shaking a long lean finger at his enemy, had croaked: "Lay on Macduff and damned be he that first cries Hold, Enough," the Senate had seen a very bitter scene of personal animosity.

After the President's note, unusual in that it pointedly omitted to thank the Senate for its services, had been read, the motion to adjourn was offered and carried. Twenty-eight minutes later, at 7:23, the House, which had been wrangling over the cotton subsidy, likewise closed up and the 75th Congress' astonishing first session was over.

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