12 Hours, 8 Minutes

Washington's lean, lanky Senator Harry P. Cain has been called "the No. 1 real-estate lobbyist in America," and says he considers it a compliment. Last week Cain proved his claim to the title.

Up for debate was a bill to extend federal rent control (due to expire June 30) for six more months, with a second six-month extension for those cities that wanted it. Administration leaders were pushing the bill hard for good political reasons--29 million people still living under rent controls were concentrated in such crucial states as Illinois, California and Pennsylvania. Harry Cain promptly announced a one-man filibuster, promised to speak "as long as I can stand up."

Pickles & Coffee. When the Senate convened on Friday, Cain was ready. Dressed in a tan gabardine suit, fitted out with a rubber urinal strapped to his left leg under his trousers, he took his stand at the front-row desk of Republican Floor Leader Kenneth Wherry. "My fight is for fair play and freedom," orated Cain. The Senate fidgeted as Cain rasped on, reading telegrams from sympathizers, commenting on golf scores, on tents, on veterans. He argued that any community that wanted control could impose it (as New York State had with Tom Dewey's backstop legislation), that "small, thrifty, Godfearing property owners" were being discriminated against because all other price controls had been lifted. Hitching at his belt, nibbling potato chips and a pickle, sipping milk and coffee, Cain proclaimed that even in 1947 there was no real shortage of housing; the trouble was that people were just not distributed properly.

Discreetly, Republicans and Southern Democrats gave him breathers by posing long questions. Three times Wherry wangled short recesses on the pretext that he could get an agreement from Cain. Each time, Cain made a beeline for the washroom, returning to his desk relieved and refreshed. But he flatly refused to compromise. By suppertime, each side had reduced itself to a corporal's guard, left behind in case of a break. The rest slipped off to dinner parties or catnapped on cots in the cloakrooms. Some fortified their spirits with quick nips of bourbon.

Until Christmas? Just after midnight, Cain abruptly ended his speech and demanded a quorum call. His filibuster had lasted 12 hours and 8 minutes.* The sergeant-at-arms began routing out snoozing Senators and, when he could not find enough, was ordered to arrest a few--a temper-raising procedure which had not been invoked since 1942. But arrests proved unnecessary as, one by one, Senators straggled in, grinning sheepishly as their waiting colleagues applauded each latecomer. For an hour the Senators wrangled. Lucas wanted an agreement to vote on the bill itself; Wherry demanded a vote on a motion to send it back to committee. Wherry won, and wearily, at 3:48 a.m., the Senators went home.

This week Cain announced spryly that he was ready to resume his filibuster at a moment's notice, but the Senate resoundingly (44-25) defeated Wherry's motion to recommit the bill. Harry Cain gave up.

Without further debate, Administration supporters happily shoved the rent control bill through and sent it to the House.

Last week the Senate also:

P: Approved the Displaced Persons bill, which Nevada's Pat McCarran had held up for a year, and sent it to the President. The bill increased D.P. admissions from 205,000 to 341,000. In return, the Senate briskly passed McCarran's pet project: a bill to admit 250 Basque sheepherders for Nevada ranches.

P: Voted $10,000 for an investigation of homosexuals on the Government payroll.

P: Received from its Armed Services Committee a bill extending the draft three years, but carrying an amendment by Georgia's Richard B. Russell aimed straight at the President's anti-segregation program. Russell would give each inductee his choice of serving in mixed or all-white units. "They talk about civil rights," said Russell. "This is civil rights; it protects the individual in his own choice."

*No record: in 1908, Robert M. La Follette Sr. filibustered (with 32 interruptions) for 18 1/2 hours against a bill to expand the currency. The longest without interruptions (11 1/2 hours) was by Utah's Reed Smoot, against a 1915 bill to allow Government purchase of merchant ships. Others: Huey Long (15 1/2 hours) for a 1935 NRA amendment seeking Senate control of nearly all executive appointments; Louisiana's Allen J. Ellender (12 1/4 hours) against FEPC last year.

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