Symptom on the Cheek

With half a dozen major legislative items, e.g., the highway construction and public-housing programs, still hanging fire, the leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives gave up in their efforts to adjourn by the end of July, last week began aiming for Aug. 6. But among the rank and file there was a sure sign that virulent adjournment fever, symptomized by extreme irritability, had set in; two of the members came to blows.

Seated side by side in the House Education and Labor Committee room were New York's Democratic Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr., pastor of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church in his spare time, and West Virginia's Democratic Representative Cleveland Bailey, who preaches the gospel pretty much according to John L, Lewis. Under discussion was the $1.6 billion school-construction program and Powell's attempt to amend it so as to bar funds to any school district that practices segregation.

In the past, Cleve Bailey has supported some of Powell's civil-rights efforts, but he feared that this one, by incurring the hostility of certain Southern Congressmen, would result in the death of the whole school-construction bill. Powell's amendment would be fatal, snapped Bailey, and Powell knew it. Retorted Powell: "You are a liar." Thereupon, the scramble started.

Powell, a onetime Colgate javelin hurler, seemingly had all the assets. He is 46, while Bailey is 69. Powell is an arrow-straight 6 ft. 4 in., and Bailey, who stoops slightly, is at least half a foot shorter. Powell is a heavyweight (190 Ibs.); Bailey could probably make the welterweight limit (147 Ibs.).

But Bailey had the advantage of surprise. He turned in his chair and launched a looping right that landed on Powell's right cheekbone. Possibly as much from astonishment as anything, Powell went over backward. Bailey leaped after him, reached down to grab Powell by the collar, and was drawing back his right fist for another haymaker when other committee members grabbed him and pulled him away.

Powell lost more than the tussle: his amendment was defeated in the committee, which went on to approve the school-construction bill. After the scrap, both men tut-tutted the whole affair. Said Powell: "Cleve Bailey and I smoke cigars together." Said Bailey: "The whole thing never happened." As Bailey made the denial, he showed reporters a half-inch cut on his right wrist, his only wound in the fight.

Last week the House also:

P:Passed, after a long and lackluster debate, a bill raising the U.S. minimum wage from 75-c- to $1. The 362-54 vote came over Administration objections that a minimum wage of more than 90-c- would work a hardship on some small businessmen with narrow profit margins. If signed by the President, the bill (already approved in much the same form by the Senate) may give pay raises to some 2,000,000 workers.

P:Approved, by a 372-10-31 vote, a liberalized social security bill that would reduce from 65 to 62 the age at which women are eligible for benefits, give aid to disabled insured persons at 50, and continue benefits for disabled youths beyond the present 18-year-old cutoff. Still before the Senate Finance Committee for hearings, the legislation may not be completed until next year.

P:Sent to the Senate a bill authorizing a $30 million atomic-powered ship. The vessel would take longer to build than the one requested by President Eisenhower (who contemplated the use of a Nantihistype reactor) and would carry passengers as well as freight.

The Senate:

P:Refused, 50 to 38, to agree with the House in slashing military aid funds by $420 million in the Mutual Security bill. Then the Senate passed the $3.2 billion bill, 62 to 22, and sent it to a House-Senate conference committee, where a hard fight was expected.

P:Shouted through a bill authorizing the Surgeon General of the U.S. to assist the states through grants-in-aid in providing free polio vaccine to persons under 20 and to expectant mothers. As sent to the House of Representatives, the bill left the specific amount of aid open for future appropriations.

P:Confirmed the appointment of Marion B. Folsom as Secretary of Health. Education and Welfare, and of Ohio's H. Chapman Rose to Folsom's old job as Under Secretary of the Treasury. The Senate also confirmed Reuben B. Robertson as Deputy Secretary of Defense, succeeding Robert Anderson, after Robertson had divested himself of 75 shares of B.F. Goodrich stock (valued at $5,000) and 340 shares of Procter & Gamble stock ($34,000). Both companies do defense work.

P:Voted to give authority to the Robert A. Taft Memorial Foundation to build a monument on the Capitol grounds to the late Ohioan, and set up a commission to make plans for a Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial. New Hampshire's Republican Senator Styles Bridges slyly asked that the Roosevelt commission also consider a memorial to Massachusetts' Republican Calvin Coolidge, but later withdrew the motion.

The House and the Senate:

P:Saw, in their Appropriations committees, revised plans for the building of the new Air Force Academy, in which the vast expanses of glass in the original drawings (to which the masonry lobby objected) were hastily painted over so as to show more politically safe bricks, stones and cement. Thus reassured, the Senate committee voted to restore Academy building funds that had recently been deleted by the House.

P:Received, from the House-Senate Conference Committee, a rewritten military reserve bill (the House and Senate had passed widely different reserve bills). No man on active duty--before the legislation is finally enacted--would be obligated to enter the reserves. In the future the total active military obligation would be six years. The compulsory ready reserve training would be 48 drills and 17 days of field training a year (with an alternative of 30 days of field duty). Incentives were provided to persuade men now on active duty to volunteer for the reserves. Youths from 17 to 18 1/2 years of age would get an opportunity to sign up for three to six months of active service (followed by the rest of their eight years reserve obligation), which would be deferred until they graduate from high school or reach the age of 20 (whichever comes first).

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