THE CONGRESS: Hard Worker

Not by accident is Tennessee’s George L. Berry a millionaire. He worked hard to build the International Printing Pressmen & Assistants’ Union, which still pays him $10,000 per year as its president. He worked hard, too, to build up his profitable playing card factory. He invested shrewdly in equities and real estate (his 20,000-acre farm at Mooresburg is one of eastern Tennessee’s finest and he makes it pay). He worked hard but in vain to collect a claim for $1,600,000 when he thought he had a case against the Government for some marble-bearing lands flooded by TVA. He also worked hard but also in vain to get nominated last summer to the Senate seat which he got in 1937 by appointment from Governor Gordon Browning.

Hardworking George Berry lost his Senate primary race to Tennessee’s Attorney-General Tom Stewart (of Scopes “monkey trial” fame). After Nominee Stewart had gone through the formality of being elected November 8, Senate Financial Clerk Charles F. Pace cut George Berry off the Senate payroll. Clerk Pace assumed that Mr. Berry was not a lame duck but a dead duck, that his tenure as an appointed Senator ended on the election of his successor instead of limping on until the new Congress meets (January 3) and regular Senators-elect are sworn in.

Last week George Berry wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee demanding $1,511.12 for his “services” from November 8 to January 3.

Ironic angle: the money which George Berry wanted, Tom Stewart did not want. By accepting it he would accept Senatorhood before his term as Attorney-General expires, which would give Tennessee’s Governor Browning (his and Boss Ed Crump’s enemy) a chance to handpick an interim Attorney-General.