THE CONGRESS: 72nd Made

WHOSE CAR IS IT NOW?

N. L.

Three days after election Democratic House Leader John Nance Garner of Texas received that telegram. His red cowboy face twisted up into an even redder knot of merriment. “N. L.” was, of course, his great & good friend Nicholas Longworth. Republican Speaker of the House. The “car” was the dark blue Packard limousine (1928 model) assigned by the Government to the House’s presiding officer. Because the car would pass to him if the Democrats should control the House and elect him Speaker, Congressman Garner had often joshed Speaker Longworth about “our car.” To Speaker Longworth he telegraphed this reply:

THINK IT’S MINE. WILL BE A PLEASURE TO LET YOU RIDE.

J. G.

217-217; 48-47. Who would ride officially in the Speaker’s limousine after March 4, 1931 neither Republican Longworth nor Democrat Garner nor anyone else knew for sure because the elections which made the 7 2nd Congress had failed to produce an incontestable House ma jority (218 seats) for either party. As the first hasty ballot-count came to an end throughout the land, it appeared that the voters had achieved that rarest of results, a numerically exact tie in the House. The balance was hardly less close in the Senate where the Vice President’s vote might be invoked to break a deadlock.

The new House: Republicans 217; Democrats 217; Farmer Laborite 1.

The new Seriate: Republicans 48; Democrats 47; Farmer Laborite 1.

Control. Barring a special session, the 72nd Congress will first convene Dec. 7, 1931. As all observers hastened to point out, the Congressional line-up during the intervening twelve months will undoubtedly be shifted to one party or the other by deaths or resignations.* To add to the uncertainty of control at least a dozen House and Senate elections will be formally contested after Congress meets, in addition to earlier recounts in the field. In an Indiana Congressional District (8th), for example, a Republican claimed victory by ten votes out of 88,400 while in an Illinois district (24th) a Democrat insisted he had won by 13 votes out of 54.600. The senatorial election in Minne sota hinged on some 8,000 votes out of 565,000. But no such late switches would be large enough to give either party the working majority of 25 or more House seats required to legislate without interference.

Insurgency. Uncertain though the nominal party organization of the new Congress was, one situation stood clear: the Insurgent Republicans will have tremendous influence in shaping House and Senate affaire. The fist House, with its docile G. O. P. majority of 103, was President Hoover’s legislative mainstay which obediently gave him the tariff and farm bills he wanted. The 72nd House, how ever, will not dance to the President’s measures. Republican House insurgency disappeared six years ago when the G. O. P. rolled up a majority which no coalition could damage. Now it is ready to become the real balance of House power. Still leader of the insurgent bloc is Wisconsin’s Representative James A. Frear, greying, intense, humorless. He can always muster a dozen or more Northwest Republican votes for any “progressive” program or against any program which the Old Guard wants to ram through. A prime insurgent demand: revision of the House rules to facilitate the discharge of committees which refuse to report out, for open floor debate, bills disapproved by the majority leadership.

“Progressive Program.”Senate insurgency was flushed with increased power as a result of the elections. Its leaders, Norris of Nebraska and Borah of Idaho, had been thumpingly reelected. Increased Democratic strength gave it new audacity. It was primed to dictate and demand. First to sound off with an anti-Administration program was Iowa’s loud Senator Smith Wildman Brookhart who declared : “This must not be merely a change from tweedledee to tweedledum. The Democrats and Progressive Republicans must at once adopt an aggressive and affirmative policy.” The Brookhart program: 1) demand the resignation of Andrew William Mellon as Secretary of the Treasury; 2) new farm relief bill containing the export debenture; 3) government operation of Muscle Shoals and drastic Federal regulation of public utilities; 4) enlarged road building and waterway development appropriations to aid unemployment; 5) bills to restrict stock speculation and short sales of farm commodities; 6) a constitutional amendment to abolish the “lame duck” session of Congress.

Senator Brookhart declared that unless the coming short session of Congress acted on his “Progressive” program he favored holding up vital appropriation bills, thus forcing President Hoover to call a special session next Spring.

Senate Organization. Forty-nine votes are needed to organize the Senate, to control committee chairmanships. Republicans had 48 and the Vice President’s vote in case of a tie, which could apparently be produced only in case Senator Henrik Shipstead, Minnesota’s Farmer Labor member, joined with the 47 Democrats. Newsmen rushed to Senator Shipstead to learn how he would vote. “The people,” retorted the scholarly, duck-hunting Farmer Laborite who used to be a dentist, “are suffering from intellectual bankruptcy of men in high places.” But he did not tell which way he would vote on organization. In the past he has voted with the Republican majority.

To add to the confusion Senator Brookhart announced that the Democrats could have his vote to organize the Senate if they would vote for his “Progressive” plans. But most other insurgents were cold to the idea of Democratic control, which would probably mean ousting Senator Borah as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and Senator Norris as chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

The chance of Democratic control was further weakened by the announcement of Governor Huey Parham Long, Senator-elect from Louisiana, that he would not take his seat until his gubernatorial term expires in 1932. Governor Long feared to leave his State in charge of Lieut. Governor Paul Cyr, his political foe, who has vowed to wreck the Long patronage machine if its owner ever crosses the State line.*

House Organization. If the 217-217 House tie should by any remote possibility remain unbroken when that body meets next year, upon 34-year-old Farmer-Labor Representative Paul John Kvale of Benson, Minn, would fall a tremendous decision. He would be a sort of political traffic cop, for his all-important vote could put either Republican Longworth or Democrat Garner into the Speaker’s automobile. War veteran, county newspaper editor, secretary to his late father, Representative Ole John Kvale who succeeded Andrew J. Volstead in the House only to be burned to death last year in a summer cottage (TIME, Sept. 23, 1929), young Representative Kvale spoke modestly of the fateful future: “Changes will inevitably take place in the personnel. … I see no immediate need for making a decision.”

Because of the even balance of Republican and Democratic strength, neither side was overeager to take the large responsibility and small authority of control. Soberly declared Democratic Leader Garner: “If Longworth is re-elected Speaker he knows any time I want to I can make trouble for him and if I should be elected he knows he can do the same for me.”

Democratic Gains. Whether they eventually won or lost the House, Democrats had achieved sweeping gains in last fortnight’s anti-Hoover whirlwind. Subject to official revision, they had taken 52 seats from Republican incumbents, lost just one (the 8th Illinois District). Their tentative 51-seat gain was scattered as follows: Connecticut 2; Illinois 6; Indiana 6; Iowa 1; Kentucky 6; Maryland 2; Missouri 6; Nebraska 2; New Jersey i; New Mexico 1; North Carolina 2; Ohio 6; Oklahoma 2; Oregan 1; Pennsylvania 3; Virginia 2; West Virginia 1; Wisconsin 1. They had routed two Republican Drys (Ohio’s Morgan, Illinois’ Denison) who had been caught transporting liquor. They had ousted Maryland’s Zihlman, known as the “Mayor of Washington” because he was chairman of the House District of Columbia Committee. They had defeated Indiana’s Elliott who, as chairman of the Public Buildings & Grounds Committee, helped put through legislation to beautify Washington, build hundreds of post offices. They had beaten Mrs. Katherine Langley in her mountainous, rock-ribbed-Republican district in Kentucky. In the first Tennessee district Republican Representative B. Carroll Reece, the only party man President Hoover had endorsed for reelection, was beaten by Oscar Byrd Lovette, an Independent.

Unchallenged in the Senate stood the eight seats Democrats had wrested from Republicans in Massachusetts, West Virginia, Ohio. Illinois, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, South Dakota. To these gains was added a ninth when last week’s belated count showed that Democrat Maruel Mills Logan had roundly trounced Lincoln-faced Republican Senator (by appointment) John Marshall Robsion in Kentucky. Only upset in the late returns came in Minnesota where blind, insurgent Republican Senator Thomas Schall wriggled through to re-election over Democrat Einar Hoidale and thereby gave the G. O. P. its one-man Senate margin. Senator-reject Hoidale called for a recount, threatened to institute contest proceedings before the Senate.*

Comments. Postmortems on the election were profuse.

John Jacob Raskob, National Democratic Chairman, said: “To have won such a notable victory is an achievement for which Mr. Jouett Shouse and his organization deserve real credit.”

Jouett Shouse, chairman of the Democratic National Executive Committee (TIME, Nov. 10), declared: “Dissatisfaction with the Hoover Administration was the paramount reason. . . .”

Senator Simeon Davison Fess, National Republican Chairman: “No uniform pattern … a crazy-quilt.”

Robert Hendry Lucas, Republican executive director: “Everything considered, the result must be taken as a vindication of the national Administration.”

Citizen Calvin Coolidge: “. . . The country will survive. . . .”

Republican Senator-reject Henry Justin Allen of Kansas: “. . . [I] had the misfortune to be ill the entire campaign period. . . . The results show no evidence of a revolt against the Administration.”

Business Bid. As a piece of smart politics to allay the fears of Big Business, to bid for its favor, seven of Democracy’s most potent leaders—James Middleton Cox, John William Davis and Alfred Emanuel Smith, the party’s last three presidential nominees, together with Senate Leader Joseph Taylor Robinson, House Leader Garner, National Chairman Raskob and Executive Chairman Shouse—signed a manifesto on the party’s future course. They said they regarded their “remark-able victory” as an “opportunity for constructive service.” The Republican tariff they flayed as the “apotheosis of bad economy” but added: “Whatever changes may be considered necessary to rid the present act of its outstanding enormities, nothing is further from [our] minds than a general revision of the tariff.” Other excerpts:

“The Democratic party . . . will steer the legislation of the nation in a straight line toward the goal of prosperity. . . . The 72nd Congress will not be an obstructive body. It will not seek to embarrass the President. … It has in mind no rash policies. Its legislative leaders are serious men, constructive but not reactionary. . . . They know perfectly well that even enlightened political selfishness demands that business should not be frightened. … If there are delays, embarrassments and confusion in the 72nd Congress, the fault will lie with the other party failing to join us in a conscientious effort to subordinate politics to the public good.”

Chairman Shouse was given credit for this shrewd economic plea as an opening gun of the 1932 presidential campaign. Only thing that worried the Democrats in the aftermath of their victory was the way the stockmarket sagged lower and lower.

Significance. In its broadest aspect the 1930 Congressional election was a serious reversal for President Hoover and his Administration. Last month he personally visited three States (Massachusetts, Ohio, North Carolina). In each of them the election tide ran against him. Directly or indirectly he and his actions, or lack of action, were implicit issues under the criss-cross veneer of local questions. Voters struck out blindly at him because since 1928 when he arrived, Prosperity had vanished; because his Farm Board had not yet brought agriculture relief; because his handling of Prohibition seemed procrastinating, indecisive, flabby (see p. 20). Hoover hostility was stronger in the Midwest where the G. O. P. lost 31 House and five Senate seats than in the East where only five House and two Senate seats were lost. The Democrats had gained much but not so much as they anticipated. What heartened them most was the time-proven axiom that a party-in-power that loses Congress at midterm—and President Hoover for all practical purposes had lost Congress—loses the Presidency two years later.

*Life insurance actuaries estimate that of the 531 Senators and Congressmen at least seven will die within the year.

*Last week Governor Long arranged to attend a flood control conference at St. Louis this month by the expedient of taking Lieut. Governor Cyr along with him. Declared Governor Long: “And I think we’d better bunk together because we don’t want to get out of each other’s sight a minute.”*Senator Schall was seated in 1924 only after a vituperative election contest with bull-voiced Farmer Laborite Magnus Johnson.