THE CONGRESS: Pre-Session

Around the U. S. Capitol there was no rest for janitors, even on Sunday. Through the marble halls of Senate and House office buildings they pushed crates of furniture and filing cabinets. Painters slapped on new paint. Scrub women wore out their knees. There was a minor tempest in the office of Senator John Overton of Louisiana because missing from its place beside his desk was the special coffee pot in which his daughter Katharine brews him French coffee four times daily. The House restaurant, newly redecorated, appeared with a new menu on which the cheapest luncheon was 60¢ instead of 45¢. Arthur Vandenberg Jr., secretary to his papa Senator, appeared as a musician at a fashionable tea. John Nance Garner appeared as an off-the-record speaker at a luncheon of the National Press Club and packed the gallery. Boston’s beaver-bearded Representative George Holden Tinkham chuckled with delight in his dark apartment in what was formerly the Arlington Hotel—where he and the Resettlement Administration are now sole tenants —when he received from the U. S. Consul in Kenya Colony official assurance that his long forgotten record of shooting six leopards on a 17-day safari is still tops in all British East Africa.

Such last week were the miscellaneous harbingers of a new Congress, but there were others more specific. Representative Louis Ludlow of Indianapolis, hulking ex-newshawk who three months ago sent the Clerk of the House the draft of a bill with the request that it be the session’s Bill No. —an honor which Wright Patman of Texas won at the last two sessions for his Bonus Bill—got it back all neatly printed. Before a battery of cameramen he marched up and dropped it in the hopper (see cut). It was free publicity for a pet project of the Fraternal Order of Eagles to have a Commission find out how to stabilize employment.

¶ Senator Glass, who since the death of Senator Fletcher has been senior member of the Senate Banking & Currency Committee with the right to become its chairman, made a difficult decision. Although banking has been his specialty for many years, he renounced his opportunity to become chief arbiter of future banking bills in order to retain his present chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee—and his hold on the New Deal’s purse strings.

¶In South Dakota, Democratic Governor Tom Berry did one of his last important acts before handing over his office to his Republican successor; in place of Senator Peter Norbeck who died two weeks ago, he appointed Herbert E. Hitchcock, a lively, good-natured 69-year-old widower, no kin to Nebraska’s late great Senator Gilbert Hitchcock. Since Mr. Hitchcock, a lawyer, is chairman of the State Democratic Committee and Mr. Norbeck was a Republican, Governor Berry put a new burden on the shoulders of Leslie Biffle, secretary of the Senate Majority. Last year Mr. Biffle managed to crowd 71 seats on the Democratic side of the Senate’s centre aisle, leaving 25 seats on the other side for the 23 Republicans and Farmer-Laborite Shipstead and Progressive La Follette. After this year’s election there were 75 Democrats and Senator Hitchcock, the straw that might have broken the camel’s back, became a 76th. Customary but unpopular solution of such a problem is to create a “Cherokee strip” by assigning the seats directly across the aisle to members of the majority. Far from baffled, Mr. Biffle invented something new, a Cherokee rim, a dozen seats for Democrats in the last two rows behind the Republicans.

¶Senator Joe Robinson, Majority leader, made his presession announcements.

They were two: 1) He did not expect Congress to adjourn until June, 2) He was flatly in favor of an Amendment to the Constitution giving Congress the power to pass minimum wage, maximum hour and antichild labor laws.

¶New Hampshire, which elected Republican Arthur B. Jenks to the House, recounted and found a tie, re-recounted electing Democrat Alphonse Roy, sent last-minute news to Washington: a third recount had given victory back to Republican Jenks by ten votes, Mr. Roy would take his contest to the Capitol.

¶Big eve-of-the-session event was the meeting of the Democratic caucus of the House to pick a majority Floor leader. Before it met, Representative Rankin of Mississippi, outsider in the contest, withdrew from the race leaving the field to the two bitter contenders. Representative Sam Rayburn of Texas and Representative John J. O’Connor of Manhattan (TIME, Dec. 14). Both went into the caucus claiming certain victory. The payoff came when Tammany Representative Thomas Cullen seconded Mr. Rayburn’s nomination, thereby committing “treason” according to Mr. O’Connor. Only one ballot was required: Rayburn 184, O’Connor 127.