Collapse In the Capitol

The Capitol of the United States stood last week as white, massive and immovable as ever under the hot July sun. But within it took place a series of political upheavals more momentous than any since the Hundred Days of 1933. Explosion after smoky explosion blew away Franklin Roosevelt's last vestige of control over both houses of Congress. When the week ended, the Democratic Party lay split asunder, with the larger half lying away from the President, coalesced with the Republicans, the smaller half crumbling toward him in frightened fragments.

Starting as a sharp crack with the Court fight in 1937, the Democratic split had widened after Mr. Roosevelt's abortive Purge of 1938. The elections last autumn drove in fresh wedges so alarming to Mr. Roosevelt that he attempted no legislative program of his own in the 76th Congress except nonpartisan National Defense. Scornfully he challenged Congress to get a legislative program of its own. Slowly awkwardly but with a determination which mounted as Mr. Roosevelt opposed and sneered at it, the Congress did formulate and pursue such a program.

Responsive to popular sentiment, it revised taxes against the President's will. Vote-hungry, it lavished money on farmers. Economy-minded (if not economy-willed), it pared the Relief outlay, tightened the rules, canceled projects it considered frittering. Stubborn, self-assertive, it would have taken away the President's monetary powers had he not been able to barter with enough venal Silver Senators. Weary of experiment, it harnessed TVA. But all these anti-Roosevelt actions were a gentle prelude to what came last week.

Suspicious of his motives, the Congress voted not to turn Franklin Roosevelt loose in world power politics. The scene one night last week upstairs in the Oval Room at the White House, with the President of the United States making one last, futile plea to a steadfast coalition of Senators grouped against his brand of Neutrality marked the nadir of collapse. In rapid succession other collapses followed.

Labor. Keystone of the temple built by the New Deal for Labor is the National Labor Relations Act, administered by the NLRBoard. Last week a coalition of House Democrats (mostly Southerners to whom C. I. O. is anathema), and almost all the Republican minority voted (254-to-134) to investigate NLRB. Meat of this inquiry will be: how far has the Board favored C. I. O. over A. F. of L.? How far employe over employer? Has it exceeded its statutory powers? Administered improperly? Written arbitrary law? All these are charges that have been brought daily, weekly, month-in-month-out by the anti-Roosevelt forces which fought the Board's creation in Congress, its preservation by the Supreme Court. Spokesman for these forces and prospective conductor of the inquiry was Virginia's spindly, laconic Representative Howard Smith, 56, whom Mr. Roosevelt tried and failed to purge last year. Courteous and calm as usual in his year-round boiled shirt and wing collar, Mr. Smith offered no denial when New Jersey's buxom Mary Norton, chairlady of the Labor Committee, shouted: "Certainly he is the last man in the world to pass on labor legislation. I have taken the trouble to investigate his labor record and I have yet to find a single labor bill for the bene fit of the workers of the country that he has ever voted for."

Floor & ceiling of Labor's new temple are the Wage & Hour Act and administration. Southerners from newly industrialized, low-wage districts bided their time to fight this law's 25-c-, 44-hour limits. Their time came when, reinforced by Representatives from packing and canning areas, they felt strong enough to try to substitute, this week, amendments (to exempt more classifications from the Act) by North Carolina's Barden for purely corrective amendments prepared by Mary Norton. The latter, meantime, had been held in check by a Southern-conservative bloc on the Rules Committee (including NLRB's nemesis, Mr. Smith). Mrs. Norton's amendments were once approved by Wage & Hour Administrator Elmer Andrews, who when he first went to Washington last year was rated a placid, patient civil servant, impartial as be tween employer and employed. A gauge of the intensity of feeling aroused on Labor issues was Mr. Andrews' announcement last week that he now wanted no changes whatsoever in his law, for the main reason that he had found "union labor does not want them." He called the Bardenites "the dime-an-hour bloc."

Lending. Franklin Roosevelt's "Great White Rabbit of 1939" --the $3,860,000,000 "self-liquidating" lend-spend program whereby Recovery was to be revived in 1940 (TIME, July 3), was more raw meat for the Republocratic coalition last week. Foreign credits were a feature clipped off the Rabbit even before Majority Leader Barkley introduced it in bill form. The Senate Banking & Currency Committee promptly knocked $310,000,000 off the Barkley total of $2,800,000,000. Chief re ductions were $500,000,000 instead of $750,000,000 for toll roads, bridges and the like; $350,000,000 instead of $500,000,000 for railroad equipment. Only increase was $90,000,000 for reclamation in the West. The Committee insisted on a provision barring loans for projects (e. g., power plants) competitive with private enterprise. It abolished the permanency of all proposed revolving funds, fixing time limits up to 30 years for bond liquidations. It obliged Leader Barkley to remove "Self Liquidating" from his bill's euphonious title, substituted "Works Financing."

From Jesse Jones, master of the new Loan Agency, came the admission that RFC had the power and loan authority to handle perhaps half the new business proposed by Mr. Roosevelt; also the admission that RFC's loan history is not without sad chapters of loss, chapters to which the proposed loans would doubtless add heavily. As it went toward the Senate floor this week, the Great White Rabbit looked lame and skinny indeed compared to the plump, agile creature pictured in the President's special message. And the Republocrats promised, armed with ammunition from reluctant Mr. Jones, to run it skinnier, lamer yet on the Senate floor.

On the House side, the Rabbit suffered even more grievous indignities, Majority Leader Sam Rayburn had to appear in person before the rebellious Rules Committee--for the first time in his two years of leadership, as he ruefully admitted--to get right-of-way for the Rabbit to the House floor. The rule was granted, but in discussing the proposed expansion of USHA's loan authority by another $800,000,000, Republocrats put their fingers on a fact passed over by the Senate: that the $73,000,000 which USHA would now be authorized to give away each year as grants-in-aid to "supplement" low rentals, would amount in 60 years to an outlay of $4,380,000,000 to recover the $1,600,000,000 loaned. This observation, by Republican Wolcott of Michigan, started the Rabbit toward the House with a severe kink in its back.

Law-Making. When Joe Robinson was Majority Floor Leader of the Senate, no Democrat would have dreamed of trying to slip over an important bill when the Leader was away from his desk or preoccupied. Last week the level to which the supposedly ruling party had fallen was sensationally exposed by Leader Barkley's own colleague, ponderous Logan of Kentucky, who slipped over an act basically altering the authority of the New Deal's entire administrative structure while Leader Barkley and his whip, "Shay" Minton, were engrossed in conversation right on the floor. Not only that, but Senator Logan argued in open Senate against his colleague and Leader, when the latter came to next day. He would not yield his victory, and garrumped at the New Deal agencies whose oxen were most seriously gored: "Congress created them and if Congress wants to restrict their powers, they should keep their mouths shut!"

Senator Logan's act, introduced by Pennsylvania's Walter in the House, embodied a protest which he and other eminent legalists, in & out of the American Bar Association, have been making since long before the New Deal: that the administrative departments and independent agencies of the Government (notoriously the Federal Trade Commission in Republican days, the NLRB and SEC more lately) have compiled vast tomes of offhand, capricious rulings which have the force of law and from which there is no clear recourse.

The Walter-Logan Bill provides recourse through the Federal Circuit Courts and up to the Supreme Court, thus throwing vast legal jungles open to immediate appeal (and possible exploitation). Moreover, the bill imposes strict rules upon administrative officers and employes for making their decisions public and in writing for all to see. Damages are provided for injured appellants. The Department of Justice dislikes the act because it goes so far, and because a committee appointed by Frank Murphy is working on the same subject, might well produce a monument to him.

Sleepy "Shay" Minton managed to detain Senator Logan's passed bill at the Senate's threshold last week by a motion to reconsider, but if it passes the House this week, Kentucky's Logan will have a historic triumph over "administrative autocracy."

Pernicious Politics. Finally in last week's crashing tumult came the "Act to prevent pernicious political activities," the famed Hatch Bill so long bottled up in the House Judiciary Committee and there threatened with emasculation by the New Deal. This was the one piece of legislation upon which Vice President Garner ventured a prophecy this session, and he declared (on the White House steps) that it would pass. It was an act written by New Mexico's upstanding Senator Carl Atwood Hatch whose disgust with political-appointees-in-politics, dating from 1932, was heightened by last year's most noisome WPA-in-politics scandal. That scandal revolved around New Mexico's other, but unadmired Senator: tea-colored Dennis Chavez, and his relatives (who were indicted, tried but acquitted). Sentiment for the bill was further bolstered by the national Senatorial campaigns investigation of Texas' revered Senator Sheppard. The bill also had this practical appeal: while it grabbed the coattail of the Roosevelt Federal political organization, it laid no restrictive hand on State officers or State political machinery, which in the long run are the agencies that send men to Congress.

The measure provided, in essence, that Federal jobholders might not use their job influence to coerce or cajole votes or money in national elections. Publicist Charles Michelson of the Democratic National Committee pointed out that, as drawn, it might prohibit all Democratic incumbents from working for their own reelection. In the absence of Vice President Garner's sick old friend, Hatton Sumners of Texas, Acting Chairman Emanuel ("Manny") Celler of the Judiciary Committee promised, after a White House visit, to have the bill's "monstrosities and absurdities" removed.

Last week New Mexico's lone Representative, white-domed John J. Dempsey, went to bat. Born in Pennsylvania, transplanted West since 1920 for his daughter's health, Jack Dempsey is a man of affairs, independently rich (Brooklyn Rapid Transit, Continental Oil & Asphalt, U. S. Asphalt), who went into Southwest politics. When the time came, he blasted the Hatch Bill out of committee to the House floor and there smashed it through (242-to-133) unemasculated, over New Dealer objections that it would return campaigns to corporation control, put the ins at the mercy of the outs, deprive citizens of inalienable rights. So ably did Jack Dempsey perform, so strong was the backing he aroused, that the House even extended the Senate's bill to cover primaries and political conventions as well as elections. The only important concession Dempsey allowed was to exempt from the bill's ban on "any active part in political management or in political campaigns" the President & aides, the Vice President, Congress, Cabinet, sub-Cabinet and policy officers whose appointments are confirmed by the Senate. All other executive employes were barred, though still allowed to express preferences and vote. In the long, hot, hysterical wrangle, one nutshell exchange was this:

Parsons of Illinois: "Why is it a worse crime for the poor fellow who is out in the open somewhere, drawing $100 or $150 a month, to engage in political campaigns any more than a Cabinet officer?"

Dempsey: "He engages in political campaigns in most instances as he is directed, as he is forced to engage in it. That is the difference!"

If the scene in the House was memorable, the one in the Senate was historic. When the House-amended bill was offered for unanimous approval by Senator Hatch, Vice President Garner whanged down his gavel and growled: "Without objection, it is so ordered!"

"Whoa!" said a half-hearted voice, and up got "Shay" Minton, the Majority Whip, to do his duty, to move that the bill be referred to conference. While Dennis Chavez momentarily sat quiet and the rest of the Senate waited breathless, Carl Hatch turned on Minton like a tiger. Cried he:

"Let nobody be deceived . . . by the issue. A vote to send it back to conference is . . . a vote to send the bill to the graveyard. . . . Let there be no hiding behind good intentions. . . . , [and then] send it to conference where we know it will die!" Faltered "Shay" Minton:

"I wanted to take a look at the bill. . . . I have no dagger up my sleeve for his beloved bill. I have no intention to knife my friend in the back. So far as I am concerned, the Senator may have his bill, and God bless him."

So through the Hatch Bill went, and with it (for he dared not refuse to sign) went much of the strength from Franklin Roosevelt's working political machine: the army of U. S. marshals, district attorneys, WPA officers and underlings, customs collectors, inspectors, etc. etc., who worked for him so zealously in 1936 and again last year in the Purge-that-failed. It was a terrible end to a terrible week for Franklin Roosevelt, yet in the cold light of history, it had been perfectly predictable. In at least one man's mind, it was "planned that way."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.