Bull Ring in Their Noses

Proceedings began with dignity, with Senators in clean tropical suits looking urbane and trading splendid compliments. But there was an occasional waspish exchange. One was set off by Michigan's Senator Blair Moody, the newspaperman who succeeded Arthur Vandenberg. New, talkative and not yet hep to all the club customs, Moody triumphantly disclosed how a colleague had voted in a closed committee. Indiana's Homer Capehart, Moody said, had raised his hand in favor of throwing out all wage and price controls. The outraged Capehart did not think it was necessary "to have persons snooping to see whether a Senator holds up his hand. I wish to say that I do not like such tactics," sniffed Capehart. The incident was portentous. Before the week was out, sniffs had swelled into snorts of wrath, and rumpled, hollow-eyed and unshaven Senators were on a parliamentary rampage.

When the week began, the Senate had just six days to act before the expiration of the Defense Production Act. A bill before the Senate, reported out by its Banking & Currency Committee, would renew most of the President's economic controls but strip away his crucial power to roll back prices, including the price of meat. A handful of Fair Dealing Democrats and like-minded Republicans fought to put back rollbacks.

"The Troubles He Has Had." Most of the Senate was willing to gamble that inflation was no longer a threat, and that some of the President's anti-inflation weapons had better be withdrawn. Georgia's conservative Walter George said that rollbacks would "virtually stagnate business." Senators on both sides of the aisle made it plain that they just did not think much of Harry Truman, and they would not trust his Administration with any more authority.

South Carolina's Democrat Burnet Maybank, sponsor of the bill, didn't have anything against Price Stabilizer Michael Di Salle, he said. "I know the troubles he has had . . . But how do I know who is going to be in charge [of prices] next month, or month after next, or in January?" Authority to roll back prices to pre-Korean level was more White House power than Maybank was willing to put into law again. The Administration had had the power in the expiring act but had flubbed it. "The truth is," said Maybank, "the Administration has failed to act."

"One Man's Price." The best case for rollbacks was made by a Republican. Sure, said New York's Irving Ives, for almost five months after passage of the act, the Truman Administration failed "with an incredible lack of courage" to freeze prices, much less roll them back. But the freeze, when it was imposed, said Ives, had left inequities between producers who had voluntarily held their prices down and producers who had calculatingly boosted their prices while they still could.

Ives thought that those inequities had to be corrected ("One man's price is another man's cost"). Either some prices had to come down, or others would have to go up. "Then we would be on our way again along the spiraling path of inflation." But in the cloakrooms, Ives's Republican colleagues vowed that no one would be able to make the Republicans the party of inflation. They would blame it all on Harry Truman ; they could just quote Democrat Maybank.

With the Herd. It was left to another Republican to hit the anti-rollback faction where it might hurt, a blow which Harry Truman might or might not follow up to his own political advantage.

They were all cottoning to special interests, chided Oregon's gadfly Wayne Morse. In the gallery during much of the debate, as if to document Morse's charge, sat half a dozen contented-looking lobbyists, led by 215-lb. Joe Montague, lobby ist for the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, good pal of many a Congressman. Shouted Morse: "In my lifetime I have helped ring the noses of many bulls. I have never thought that I would like a bull ring in my own nose." At least some Senators, though certainly not all, had what looked like a bull ring in their noses. Majority Leader Ernest McFarland, who comes from the cattle-raising state of Arizona, deserted the White House completely to lope along obediently in the anti-rollback herd. So did Majority Whip Lyndon Johnson, of cattle-rich Texas. Maybank & Co., determined to get the whole thing over with, took the debate into a night session. The bill came to a vote between 3 and 4 a.m., when all dignity went to pot.

"Vote, Vote!" New York's Democrat Lehman, almost in tears, tried to beg off from casting a vote for legislation which the Administration had to have or lose all its economic controls, but which Lehman thought was tragically inadequate. But members yelled at him: "Vote, vote!" He read a prepared statement. The chorus roared: "Vote, vote!" and even passed a resolution that Lehman had to vote.

Ashen-faced, he voted "Yea." Connecticut's usually self-confident Benton wanted to vote "Uncertain." Republican Hickenlooper of Iowa shook his finger, shouting: "The Senator is in practical contempt of the Senate." The chamber forced Benton to declare himself. Shakily, he voted for the act. It was passed 71 to 10.*

Thus the Senate decided to take its chance that the nation's economy would stay on a more or less even keel. The House, unable to get out a bill of its own before the deadline, voted simply to extend the present act for 31 days, but with an amendment barring any rollbacks in the coming month. The Senate agreed to the extension. As a result, price rollbacks totaling more than $2 billion, scheduled for this week, would not go into effect.

Harry Truman wordlessly signed the temporary legislation.

-*The ten, all Republicans, who wanted all controls ended: Bennett (Utah), Butler (Neb.), Dirksen (Ill.), Jenner (Ind.), Knowland (Calif.), Malone (Nev.), Welker (Idaho), Wherry (Neb.), Williams (Del.), Young (N.Dak.).

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