The Quiet One

In his 14 years as Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts' Seventh District, Thomas J. Lane shouted no loud hurrahs. He went after no headline-making legislation, built up no powerful machine; his campaigning was neither colorful nor costly. He dressed unostentatiously, usually in blue suits; he neither drank nor smoked nor went out on the town nights; he read almost nothing but magazines and the newspapers (at bedtime, as sedatives) ; he owned a Cadillac he did not like to drive. His great pleasure, it seemed, was to stop strangers in the streets, in buses, in soda fountains, where he would talk understandingly about their problems without letting on that he was a Congressman. He took no vacations outside of a weekend or two in Montreal, where he liked to walk around the older parts of town chatting with janitors. Congressman Lane liked everybody--although he was no backslapper, no enthusiastic pal. "The only person I recall him not liking," a friend said, "was Vito Marcantonio, and he would even chat with him."

In Lawrence, Mass. Lane built up a prosperous private law practice and invested in real estate. He continued to live with his shy and retiring wife in the modest frame house where he was born. He relaxed in consort with his constituents: "If there's a group of war veterans meeting in Lynn or a Jewish organization meeting in Chelsea, Tom Lane will be there," a friend explained. "Three weeks ago he attended at least six affairs in Revere, Lynn and Chelsea--all on one Sunday. He just never lets up. He'll look in the paper, see that a wake is to be held or a group is meeting, and he'll say he'd better go."

Last week Congressman Lane was preparing for a fight in the House Ways and Means Committee against the Organization for Trade Cooperation (he believed OTC would reduce tariffs, hurt his textile worker constituents) when he got some bad news. In Boston a federal grand jury indicted him on three counts of evading $38,542 in income taxes. In 1949, according to the indictment, Congressman Lane declared, on a joint return with his wife, an income of $14,311 when his actual income was $57,497; in 1950 he declared $20,991 when his actual income was $43,-198; in 1951 he declared $30,956 when his actual income was $50,470. Congressman Lane acknowledged the news with no wounded cry of outrage, no angry blast of rebuttal. Instead, he slipped inconspicuously out of his Washington hotel and was available nowhere for comment.

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