National Affairs: WHO’S WHO IN THE GOP: MARTIN

Before the Philadelphia convention next June, a major job of the nation’s voters will be to absorb, weigh, and compare the records in the Republican Who’s Who of presidential candidates. Herewith, in the fifth* of a series, TIME publishes the condensed biography and political record of Massachusetts’ Joseph William Martin Jr.

Vital Statistics. Age: 63 (born Nov. 3, 1884 in North Attleboro, Mass., in a two-family frame house across the street from John Stanley’s blacksmith shop). Ancestry: eldest son of eight children of Joseph William Martin Sr., a Presbyterian Scotsman who worked in the blacksmith shop, and Catherine Katon, an Irish Catholic; both his parents were born in New Jersey. Educated: North Attleboro public schools through high school. Not Married. Church: none.

Personal Traits. He is a stocky, black-haired little man with broad shoulders and a wide-lipped Irish face and a slight trace of brogue. He is humorless; shy around women, but an easy mixer among men. He neither smokes nor drinks, wears ill-fitting blue suits and policemen’s box-toed shoes. His health is good. Said a friend: “He lives, eats, drinks, sleeps and dreams politics.”

Career. An insurance broker and newspaper publisher on the side, he has been elected to three public offices (Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1912; State Senate in 1914, re-elected 1916; U.S. Congress in 1924, re-elected ever since).

He was defeated in the 1924 G.O.P. primaries for U.S. Congressman but chosen by party chiefs as the nominee after the man who beat him died. He was chosen as minority leader of Congress in 1939; chosen to preside at the G.O.P. National Convention in 1940 (which he enjoyed) and to run Wendell Willkie’s presidential campaign (which he did not enjoy). He was elected Speaker of the House on Jan. 3, 1947. If Harry Truman dies in office, he will become President. In 1939, when the New Deal was popular with Washington newsmen, they nevertheless voted him the best all-around Congressman.

Private Life. In Washington he lives at the quiet, dignified Hay-Adams House, across Lafayette Square from the White House. He rises at 7, eats breakfast in the House restaurant because he likes the toast and can talk to fellow Congressmen, lunches either in the House restaurant or cloakroom (sandwich and pie), dines at the Hay-Adams and is in bed by 9:30 or 10.

He is an Elk and a Moose. In North Attleboro, he lives in a frame house on Grove Street with his invalid mother, a widowed sister and his brother Charles. His favorite recreation: walking. His only hobby: collecting miniature elephants.

Early Years. Father Joseph’s $15 a week as a blacksmith’s helper did not go far. Young Joe began selling newspapers at seven, later worked in nearby jewelry manufacturing plants.

He played second base and shortstop on the high-school team and was offered a scholarship to Dartmouth College. He turned it down, worked as a $10-a-week reporter on the Attleboro Sun, played semi-pro baseball on the side. By the time he was 24, he had saved $1,000.

With his savings and $9,000 borrowed from local businessmen, he bought the North Attleboro Evening Chronicle in 1908. One of his backers was G. K. Webster, president of a silverware plant and a power in Massachusetts’ 14th District.

Joe was one of the founders of a Young Republican club which met every noon at Coady’s Drugstore. They put Joe up for the state legislature. They rang doorbells for him, G. K. Webster backed him, and Joe won.

Public Record. As a state representative and state senator he was noted for his party regularity.

As a Congressman he voted with his party, generally against the New Deal and against any legislation, such as reciprocal trade agreements, which he thought might hurt his industrial 14th District.

On domestic issues he voted against TVA, AAA, NRA, Securities Exchange Act. He voted for the Social Security Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the NorrIS-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act; but from 1941 he has supported every important bill designed to balance the rights and duties of labor. In 1941, he voted against extending conscription and arming merchant ships, thereafter led the Republican minority in support of all war-winning measures. He voted for Bretton Woods, the United Nations. In 22 years in Congress he has had his name on no important bill.

In 1940, Roosevelt made him the target of personal attack when, charging the Republicans with being obstructionists and bracketing Martin with New York’s anti-New Deal Congressmen Bruce Barton and Hamilton Fish, F.D.R. sneered: “That great historic trio . . . Martin, Barton and Fish.” Joe Martin summed up his own political philosophy four years later. There is a war in the U.S., he said, between the idea of a free society and the idea of a regimented and planned society; the second conception lives upon “vast streams of Government debt,” takes its shape from “a bureaucratic elite under the command of a self-inspired leader. In Europe they call it Fascism. Here we call it the New Deal.”

As minority leader and skillful cloakroom operator, Joe Martin held the outnumbered Republicans together in a tight little band. He formed them into squads of experts on taxes, housing, etc., so that their sharpshooting would be accurate and deadly. He gave them their orders on voting; he told colleagues when they could speak on the floor. When they failed to get his permission they felt his whip-flick. Once a member delivered a rambling discourse on foreign relations without his permission. He asked Martin afterwards: “How did I go, Joe?” Martin snapped: “You didn’t go anywheres.”

By drawing disgruntled Southern Democrats into his well-organized G.O.P. camp, he was able to harry the Roosevelt Administration and kill many a New Deal bill. Wrote the late Columnist Raymond Clapper: “Martin has received the reluctant but spectacular tribute of being the first Republican since the middle of the Hoover Administration to put the fear of God into the Democratic leadership.”

As Speaker he has continued his friendly but rigid discipline. Under his leadership, the House, which is the true voice of the people in government, buckled down to the passage of constructive legislation. He approved the European trip of the Herter Committee; this helped to pass ERP on the basis of Congressmen’s independent knowledge of the European crisis. He was also largely responsible for inclusion of aid-to-China in the ERP package. In domestic affairs, he ran the tax-reduction bill through the House; held up U.M.T.; pushed and prodded for a larger Air Force; had a hand in all Republican legislation such as the Taft-Hartley act. He has made it clear to Senators Vandenberg and Taft that they must stay on their own side of the Hill, that he is running the House. He stepped boldly into the national limelight recently to intercede in the coal strike.

As a campaigner he is at his best mingling with voters at a New England clambake, shaking hands and calling off first names. He is less impressive when making a formal speech.

Pro & Con. His critics say that he is pedestrian and parochial, that his whole career has been spent in legislative dickering rather than creating or debating broad issues, that in many respects his administration would just be a G.O.P. version of the Truman Administration.

His admirers say that he is honest, fair, shrewd, that he has the common touch, knows the labyrinths of Washington. They feel that he is an able governmental practitioner who knows how to get things done. His administration would be canny, cautious and conservative, and would probably bring about great harmony between the White House and Congress.

* Previous “Who’s Whos”: Dewey (April 5), Warren (April 12), Taft (April 19), Stassen (April 26).