Last Throes

In its closing days, the smooth-running 80th Congress clanked and rattled like a leaky donkey engine. Amid the wheeze and hiss of escaping oratory and the crunch of jammed legislative gears, responsible Republican leaders set themselves a double objective. They wanted to adjourn in time for the G.O.P. convention, but they did not want to see the Soth's record marred by last-minute haste.

The closing days made one fact clear. The Republican Party--like the Democratic--is composed of two factions: responsible progressives and conservative standpatters who hanker for "normalcy." The progressives, led by Senators Vandenberg and Taft, won. But not without forcing such House conservatives as penny-pinching John Taber, Michigan's Jesse Wolcott and Rules Committee Chairman Leo Allen to eat crow.

The Wreckers. As aging legislators catnapped and clerks clogged the rear of the chamber, it became apparent that an adequate ECA appropriation and a strong draft law were essential. So were a farm program and some kind of a housing bill.

But the shortness of time was on the side of the House wreckers, and they set to work with a will. By their silence; Speaker Joe Martin and Majority Leader Charley Halleck did much to encourage them, little to whip them into line.

For weeks, Leo Allen's Rules Committee had kept the draft bill from the House floor, in the obvious hope that it would be lost or badly mauled in the closing rush. Last week, with the bill on the floor at last, the House did its best to oblige. An ill-assorted alliance of the far left and far right leaped in with knives flourishing. New York's Communist-line Vito Marcantonio and left-wing Leo Isacson joined forces with Mississippi's ranting John E. Rankin and Michigan's Paul Shafer.

They smothered the bill with amendments which would make the draft a ghastly joke. The House eagerly adopted most of them. Cried Missouri's Dewey Short: "You have perhaps not beheaded this monster but you have dehorned it . . . Why don't you be honest and defeat it?"

"One Honest Senator." But the House preferred evasion and sent the bill to the Senate. There it ran head on into a waiting filibuster by Henry Wallace's running-mate, Idaho's Glen Taylor. While the floor emptied and the galleries filled, Taylor talked for eight hours and 33 minutes. At 1:10 a.m. Saturday, he was spelled by North Dakota's lone ranger, Bill Langer. Opponents of the draft sat back and chuckled. Two of the most unpopular men in the Senate were doing their work for them.

But at 9:30 a.m. the same day, Taylor was stopped. He read a message from a Mrs. Frances Swadesh, a Manhattan housewife,* who had wired her opinion that the people "can congratulate themselves on having one honest Senator." With that, Maine's Owen Brewster was on his feet. The statement, he said, impugned the integrity of the Senate. Under the rules, Taylor must sit down. He did, and the filibuster was broken. At long last, the bill went to conference, where Senate leaders sternly hammered out a law which met military requirements in almost every respect.

Monsters & Flim-Flams. The fight went on. In a stuffy conference room, John Taber fought a rear-guard action against ECA. Time & again the conference broke up in despair. But Senate leaders were determined. By Saturday evening, Taber's House support had fallen away. Abruptly, Taber gave in. The ECA got $4 billion (only $245 million short of Administration requests), to spend in twelve months, if necessary.

Time was running out. Agreement on a housing bill seemed hopeless. Michigan's Jesse Wolcott got the House Rules Committee to kill a bill carrying what he called the "socialistic" provisions of the Senate's Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill for slum clearance and 500,000 low-cost housing units. The Senate balked at his own housing bill which he rammed through the House under a gag rule. It extended tax privileges to private builders, guaranteed their profits and mortgages. Cried New Hampshire's Charles Tobey: "A monstrosity . . . The veterans have been flim-flammed."

At 10 o'clock Saturday night, Bob Taft, taking things firmly in hand, walked over to the House cloakroom to talk turkey to Speaker Martin. While Martin recessed the House, G.O.P. leaders trooped in to his office and slammed the door. On the floor, House members broke into song; a barbershop quartet sang Let the Rest of the World Go By.

"A Teeny, Weeny Bill." Then the word came from Martin's office. Congress would work all night until it got a housing and a farm bill, then adjourn. Tired conferees met for yet another session. At 2:45 a.m. the housing compromise was ready. It wasn't much. Oklahoma's Mike Monroney called it "a teeny, weeny housing bill." It provided only for a government secondary market for G.I. mortgages, authorized veterans cooperative apartments. Wolcott had had his way.

By 4 a.m. the conferees had agreed on a farm program. Prices would be supported at the present 90% of parity for one year under the House's plan; then the Senate's long-range plan providing for flexible price-support levels would go into effect. As the hot morning sun streamed through Capitol windows, the House adjourned, subject to recall by its leaders. At 7:15 a.m. the Senate followed suit. It had been in continuous session for 44 hours and 15 minutes, the second longest in history.*

For a few days last week the unsightly faces of isolationism and reaction had bobbed ominously to the surface. They had been thrust down--but not without a struggle. G.O.P. progressives, trooping wearily off to bed before entraining for Philadelphia, had salvaged the good record of the 80th Congress.

*Interviewed in her duplex apartment, Mrs. Swadesh told newsmen she was 30 years old, a Vassar graduate, a Phi Beta Kappa, and "very, very sorry about the telegram." Then she dismissed them. Said she: "My children haye chicken pox and I am a very busy woman."

*Longest: 54 hours and 10 minutes in 1915 when the ship-purchase bill was being debated.

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