Yataghans at 15 Blocks

Yataghans at 15 Blocks

On Franklin Roosevelt's desk, when reporters trooped into his office one day last week, lay a wicked-looking gold-handled seven-inch knife--a "yataghan," presented to him by the Sultan of Muscat and Oman. Said the President, waving it over his head: "I can put it in the wall at 30 paces." Replied New York Daily News Reporter Doris Fleeson: "How far down Pennsylvania Avenue can you throw it?"

Three days after the President had exhibited his sheath-knife, the House of Representatives voted 204-to-196 to kill his Plan to reorganize the executive branch of the Federal Government. Upon Franklin Roosevelt, the net effect was comparable to that of having his own party toss a yataghan 15 blocks up Pennsylvania Avenue and put it squarely in between his shoulder blades. Reason: unlike the battle over the Supreme Court plan, the battle over the Reorganization Bill involved no major issue except whether Franklin Delano Roosevelt was still the master of his party. Until the final votes were counted, the President was reasonably sure he was.

Plans to reorganize the executive branch date back to the turn of the Century. Franklin Roosevelt's plan, introduced just before the scheme to enlarge the court, resembled one proposed by Herbert Hoover. Recognized for what it was--a straightforward attempt to increase efficiency--it occasioned little indignation. The President's subsequent sad effort to streamline the Supreme Court naturally made suspect his efforts to streamline anything else. As redrafted and passed by the Senate, the Reorganization Bill's principal provisions allowed the President to shift executive agencies with certain important exceptions, appoint one man to replace the present three-man Civil Service Commission, choose six administrative assistants "with a passion for anonymity," created a Department of Welfare and rearranged the Federal accounting system. The last thing in the world the Reorganization Bill represented was an effort on the part of Franklin Roosevelt to make himself a dictator. That it was attacked as precisely this proved that to a large section of the U. S. any administrative change which the President now suggests can be made to seem ipso facto suspect. It also proved that no kind of Congress wants to give up patronage, for one of the most important phases of the bill would have facilitated putting hundreds of appointive jobs under Civil Service.

The Supreme Court fight, concerning a question on which there was ample room for valid difference of opinion, was lost in the ordinarily self-willed Senate. It was of the greatest significance that last week's battle was lost in a chamber normally more amenable to Administrative wishes.

Outside of Congress, main figures in the fight against the Reorganization Bill were as extraordinary as the uproar they helped promote. One was Publisher Frank Gannett, who backed up his fulminations against the bill throughout his chain of upstate New York papers with something called the National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government to lobby against the bill under directions of a $400-a-week propagandist named Dr. Edward Rumely. The other was famed Father Charles E. Coughlin who emerged from his retirement to make two radio speeches on the subject. Coughlin speeches and Gannett literature produced a record-breaking flood of 333,000 telegrams to Senators and Congressmen. Their notion that Roosevelt was really a Hitler in disguise reached its climax last week when 150 "Paul Reveres" from Chicago, New England and New York journeyed to Washington to demonstrate against Reorganization in person. By this time, the principal excuse for detecting real danger in the bill--the provision whereby the President's changes in agencies could be nullified only by a two-thirds vote--had been counteracted, and passage of several other amendments had made the bill even more innocuous than it had been in the first place. By this time also, after four days of bitter debate, the House was almost ready to put the matter to a vote.

In the House, its 90 Republicans were naturally lined up solidly against the plan. So was a strong Democratic anti-Roosevelt bloc led by New York's Tammanyite John O'Connor, Chairman of the Rules Committee which stopped the President's Wages-&-Hours Bill last summer. Nonetheless, voting on amendments earlier in the week had suggested that the coalition was sufficiently outnumbered to make the final vote on recommitting--i.e., killing-- the bill little more than a formality prefacing its passage. When sturdy Mr. O'Connor rose to speak his final piece on the matter last week, the House had just heard Majority Leader Rayburn cry: "Is it possible that we want to send the message to the country tonight, even though we have the President in the White House for two years and eight months longer, that this is a leaderless land? The President of the United States is the voice of America, if. America has any voice at all. He is the leader in America, if America has any leader at all." It was 5:45 in the afternoon and spectators were peering down from the galleries into the shadowy old room. It was a moment which called for Patrick Henryesque flamboyance, and patriotic Mr. O'Connor sawed the air with both hands while supplying it:

"I love the President myself, and almost all the members of the Democratic party love the President, but this issue is above party, it is above any individual. I am appealing now for the interests of my party. If this bill is not recommitted for further study, it will be disastrous to my party and to my country, and I love my country above my party."

After Mr. O'Connor's outburst there was nothing much left to say. Alabama's Speaker William Bankhead got up to say it: "If you recommit the bill . . . you will say 'The House of Representatives by Democratic votes repudiates the President of the United States.' " In 20 minutes the roll call was over. The clerk added up the yeas and nays while the Speaker stood waiting on the dais. Said the Speaker: "The motion to recommit is carried."

In key with the fight over the Reorganization Bill last week were the consequences of the fight's conclusion. Going over the tabulation of votes, observers noted that half-a-dozen Wisconsin Progressives, whose votes for recommittal were almost the first they had ever cast against the President, had held the delicate balance of power. Lined up with them, besides 88 Republicans and a large faction of insurgent Democrats, were 44 Southerners--to whom the President's sharp words at Gainesville last fortnight could hardly have been pleasing. Beyond factional differences, what the vote showed was that more Representatives than Roosevelt guessed wanted to reassert Congressional authority and had chosen Reorganization as an ideal opportunity to do so. While Wall Street's joy at a defeat for the President next day caused stocks to jump two to six points and while Publisher Gannett was enjoying what he said was the happiest day of his life, Franklin Roosevelt found himself faced by an interesting alternative: whether to accept his sharp Congressional correction in good part or whether to take his fight to the country in this year's elections. When the President's "close associates" announced his intention of making a speech at Paducah, Ky. on behalf of Senator Alben Barkley next July, observers concluded that he would choose the latter. Only concrete indication of how the President felt with Congress' yataghan in his back last week was a note to Majority Leader Rayburn. Excerpt:

"The reorganization bill is intended to simplify and improve the public service. With this single objective in view I have given it my earnest approval. . . . The legislative developments of yesterday offer no occasion for personal recrimination, and there should be none."

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