Goober v. Famine

Georgia's Dixiecrat Gene ("Goober") Cox was in a black and angry mood. "I am sorry to bother you," he wrote last week to ten fellow members of the House Rules Committee, "but at the insistence of the Speaker, I have called a meeting of the Rules Committee for tomorrow morning at 10:30 to give consideration . . . [to] the wheat bill for India."

The subject that Goober Cox hated to be bothered about, or to bother anyone else about, was the possibility of several million people starving to death in India. For seven weeks, Gene Cox and his little clique had smothered the relief bill in committee. But now church groups across the nation were demanding action. So were many people who saw no reason why Communist China, with famine on its own hands, should harvest a psychological victory by supplying India with grain, while the U.S., which has a wheat surplus, was denying it to a nation in need. Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, who can control Southern Democrats like Cox when he has to, ordered him to get busy.

Yielding a point himself, Rayburn offered a compromise. Instead of an outright gift, the U.S. would lend India $190 million on easy terms to buy the necessary 2,000,000 long tons of grain. The terms would be left up to ECA (probably 35 years to pay at 2 1/2% interest), and India could repay the loan in strategic materials such as monazite (a source of fissionable thorium), jute and manganese.

The committee debate next morning raged loud & long. Goober Cox, after two hours of haranguing his committee ("A vote for this bill," he snorted, "is a vote of confidence in Acheson"), was surprised and disgruntled to find himself almost alone in opposition. He didn't even bother to vote and the bill was reported out, 9 to 1.

It had been 2 1/2 months since President Truman had first asked Congress to go to India's aid, and the battle was still to be fought on the floor of the House. The Senate, which was working on a half-loan, half-grant version of its own, had still to pass it. But ships and grain were ready to go as soon as Congress made its decision, and could be on the way within a fortnight.

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