Five Weeks

When Franklin Roosevelt called Congress into extraordinary session three months ago, he outlined a five-point legislative program which provided for: 1) Crop control 2) Wage, hour regulation 3) Executive reorganization 4) Regional planning 5) Anti-trust law revision Last week when Congress adjourned, it had passed a five-point program which provided for: 1) $225,000 to pay members' traveling expenses to and from the extra session. 2) $12,000 for salaries of pages. 3) Lending four of the Capitol's gallery of portraits of signers of the Declaration of Independence to the Corcoran Art Gallery for a belated sesquicentennial exhibition. 4) A minor amendment to the Credit Union Act. 5) An extension of the time-limit in which a bridge may be built over the Tennessee River at Sheffield, Ala.

The Republican floor leader of the House, New York's Bertrand H. Snell, has the duty of taking cracks at the majority, but he was in better form last week than usual when he came to summarize the highlights of the session. He listed: 1) the President's fishing trip, 2) Vice President Garner's hunting trip in Pennsylvania and 3) a Congressional eating contest, to decide the relative merits of Maine and Idaho potatoes.

Nonetheless, if in five weeks Senate and House had passed little, they had done enough spadework to insure the passage of at least one item on the President's list (a farm bill, now being rewritten in conference) several weeks earlier than otherwise. Furthermore, two items not on the original program but added later because of Recession were got under way.

One of these was an amendment to the 1934 Housing Act intended to encourage building by making it easier for prospective home builders to borrow private funds guaranteed by the Government. This was proposed by the President (TIME, Dec. 6). The other, started by Congress on its own initiative, was revising the undistributed profits tax--for which the President said he was ready whenever Congress was. By last week, the House Ways & Means Committee's sub-Committee on Taxation had put in a month's work on a new tax bill drafting of which should be completed soon after Congress reconvenes.

Before adjournment last week the Housing Bill, already passed by the House passed the Senate with only four votej cast against it. Added to it, however, was an amendment, proposed by Massachusetts' Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. In his way the smiling youngster had done as expert a bit of sabotage on the bill as his erudite grandfather and namesake ever did tc Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations. The heart of the proposal as outlined by the President was to make building easier by more lenient terms of financing, and by keeping down the costs of construction. A big element in building costs is the scale of hourly wage rates which building unions have maintained even if their members were unemployed much of the time. The hope of low-cost housing advocates was that labor might be induced to accept a lower hourly wage in return for more continuous employment that would yield a larger annual wage. The unions, fearful that their wage standards may be broken down, want none of this. Young Cabot Lodge proposed an amendment to the President's measure providing that pay rates for laborers working on buildings with mortgages insured by the Act should not be less than "prevailing rates of pay for work of a similar nature. . . ."

The Lodge amendment might have beer defeated viva voce, but Republican Floor: Leader McNary forced a roll call or which his confreres did not dare record themselves against it for fear of Labor's wrath. Then Cabot Lodge, along with Senators Borah, Frazier and Townsend, voted against the completed bill.

Day before the unproductive special session ended, Vice President Garner, Speaker of the House Bankhead, Senate Floor Leader Barkley and House Floor Leader Sam Rayburn called at the White House. What they received, judging from their gloomy looks when they emerged, was a sharp Presidential rebuke. They announced new plans: 1) to hold conference committee meetings on the crop control bill during the twelve-day recess; 2) to start a drive for a new but probably milder wages & hours bill early in the regular session; 3) to set a date for bringing up the Wagner-Van Nuys Anti-Lynching Bill, which caused a Senate filibuster last month, soon after the regular session starts next week.

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