National Affairs: Privilege and Objection

The House of Representatives passes many a tidbit of a bill because no member arouses himself to say “I object.” But one noon last week the House assembled in anything but a “unanimous consent” mood.

First Farmer Laborite Francis Henry Shoemaker from Red Wing, Minn. rose to a question of personal privilege. He declared that every day the “members of the House, including the President of the U. S. are being exposed to a dangerous social disease because the laundry for the House is done by convicts suffering from syphilis.” He was promptly shushed by a point of order.

Next Representative Homer Parker from Georgia rose to a point of personal privilege. He complained that newspapers had attacked him because he was convicted in 1917 of breaking Georgia’s gambling law by playing poker. He too was shushed after Texas’ blatant Blanton had demanded: “Has it come to a point where engaging in a poker game reflects upon the integrity of a legislator?”

Republican Hamilton Fish, in whose silk-stocking district along the Hudson River lives a voter named Franklin Delano Roosevelt, asked leave to print in the Congressional Record the words of one of the few private citizens ever to be officially received on the House floor. Said Representative Fish: “Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to place in the Record the letter written by Col. Charles Lindbergh to the President of the U. S.” There was not one objection but a deafening chorus of them led by Representative Alfred Lee Bulwinkle of Gastonia. N. C. The Democrats of the House were bitterly determined that the nation’s No. 2 hero should not be heard criticizing the nation’s No. 1 hero for the latter’s peremptory cancellation of all domestic airmail contracts.

Mr. Fish, however, was not done. He roamed up & down the centre aisle and to five small separate and successive bills which various members of the House eagerly desired passed he objected loudly. Finally Majority Leader Byrns could stand it no longer. He rose and declared:

“Mr. Speaker, I hope the gentleman from New York will not object to my request to proceed for five minutes.”

Mr. Fish: Mr. Speaker, I object.

Mr. Byrns: Well, I will tell the gentleman this—

Mr. Fish: No. You will not tell the gentleman anything. You are just an ordinary member of this House. . . .

Mr. Byrns: I will tell the gentleman—

Mr. Fish: The gentleman from Tennessee will tell me nothing! . . .

Mr. Byrns: Mr. Speaker, if that is to be the attitude of the gentleman from New York, we shall have to adjourn, but I want the country at large to know that we adjourned at 1 o’clock on account of the gentleman from New York. . . . The gentleman will never get anything by these tactics.

Mr. Fish: Do not lecture me. I have been here 14 years.

Mr. Byrns: I have been here longer than has the gentleman from New York. . . . I had hoped we would be able to proceed . . . in the interest of gentlemen on both sides of the aisle who have bills of importance to the country and to their districts. . . . Is the gentleman going to object to all bills called?

Mr. Fish: . . . If the gentleman will permit to go into the Record the telegram written by Col. Charles A. Lindbergh to the President, I shall not object.

Mr. Byrns (outraged): I am not going to be held up in that way!

Mr. Fish (indignant): Neither am I going to be held up!

So having been in session 69 minutes and accomplished absolutely nothing, the House called it a day, adjourned. In the opposite wing of the Capitol, however, Senator Schall had already read the Lindbergh telegram into the Record without any difficulty.