THE CONGRESS: In-Between Senators

Representing their electorates last week were three Senators who will never know what it is like to fidget through a filibuster. Reason: they were elected to fill vacancies from November 9 through January 2, and the Senate will not sit until January 3.

With her mother, a stenographer and a clerk, grey-haired, bustling Interim Senator Gladys Pyle (Rep.) drove all the way from South Dakota to Washington “because,” she said, “I wouldn’t feel like a Senator unless I did.” First woman to serve in the South Dakota Legislature, Senator Pyle was a candidate for Governor two years ago. As soon as she arrived in Washington, she personally screwed her nameplate on the door of her temporary office; spoke at a luncheon of the Republican National Committee; had a look at the Capitol; hurried down to the Interior Department to discuss “South Dakota problems”; drew doodles on a pink Senate memo pad. “This life,” she exclaimed, “is a hectic whirl.”

Interim Senator Alexander Grant Barry (Rep.) from Oregon spent about as much money getting elected as he will be paid for serving ($1,511.12, plus $1,818 for five clerks’ salaries and $18.75 for stationery). A Portland lawyer and one-time State Liquor Commissioner, Senator Barry worries more about his girth than a Senator ought to. His successor, full-time Senator Rufus C. Holman, will be the fourth Senator in the seat within eleven months.

Plump, ruddy-faced Interim Senator Thomas More Storke (Dem.) of California is editor and publisher of the Santa Barbara News-Press. He has long been such a close friend of his neighbor, Senator-reject William Gibbs McAdoo, that California papers call him “Deputy Senator.” In Washington he knew enough not to take the 20 job-hunting letters he received every day too seriously. Instead he read Jim Farley’s instructive autobiography, dined with friends at the Shoreham Hotel, danced to his favorite tune— The Last Roundup. “This is just a honey-moon,” he said.

Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, Minn., one-time Interim Senator Guy Victor Howard totted up the financial and political rewards of the two months he served in 1936-37. His accomplishments, he said, were to 1) land a couple of WPA projects, 2) help a man get out of jail, 3) get some Congressional Directories and Capitol calendars for friends back home. His rewards: he has enough stationery to last the rest of his natural life; he gets invited out a lot more than he used to be. “For instance,” he says, “I now go to two or three funerals a week.”