THE CONGRESS: New Faces

Carpenters came last week to Capitol Plaza, lugging tools and timber. Tourists stared; occasionally a gloomy lame-duck Congressman pottered by. The carpenters’ job was to build the Inaugural Day platform, set up hundreds of benches, before Washington’s winter closed in.

Inside the Capitol and up & down the three vast office buildings, plans were laid for the first session of the 77th Congress. Main piece of business was to get rid of Session III of the 76th, which still dragged its wounded length along. This session had sat almost as long as any Congress, had approved more peacetime appropriations: $23,135,740,635,15. (Even the 23-odd billions did not include long-range commitments of $4,000,000,000 for the two-ocean Navy.)

Soon new legislative carpenters would come to town, ready to set new appropriation totals, certainly to debate momentous blueprints. The new Congress to a man had pledged to keep the U. S. out of war, but no one could guarantee that guarantee.

Complexion of the Houses had changed little: it was leathery, middleaged, pocked with politics. But the new Congress did have an infusion of new blood. Setup:

Senate 76th 77th

Democrats ……………… 69 66

Republicans ……………………….. 23 28

Farmer-Labor …………………………. 2 0

Progressive …………………………… 1 1

Independent …………………… 1 1

House

Democrats ………………………………. 262 268

Republicans ………………………………… 169 162

Progressives 2 3

Farmer-Labor 1 0

American Labor 1 1

Independent 0 1

The new Independent in the House was J. Percy Priest, 40, of Nashville, Tenn., and his was the craggiest of all the new faces. Homely, homespun Congressman-elect Priest had won a great battle in Andrew Jackson’s old “Hermitage” District (Fifth). A onetime country schoolteacher, fond of speechifying and community singing, he started reporting for the Nashville Tennessean in 1926, eventually became its managing editor. As an executive, he pined and moped. Publisher Silliman Evans gave in, let Priest roam happily over Tennessee, covering Mule Days, dairy, tobacco and farm festivals, rallies, and such “doin’s.” Priest not only covered these functions but usually led them, making speeches, leading the singing. His country yarns were published daily under a title: “Places and People.”

Last summer Columnist Priest and Publisher Evans got angry with Representative Joseph W. Byrns Jr., who opposed conscription as “militant insanity” yet finally voted for the bill. When Priest resigned to run as an Independent against proud, citified young Joe Byrns, each member of the Tennessean chipped in from 25¢ to $1 a week to continue his salary. Regular Democrats’ sneers vanished as Clod-Hopper Clubs were formed (Byrns allegedly had said that he wouldn’t “come home to shake hands with the clodhoppers”).

Last week J. Percy Priest, like the movies’ Mr. Smith, went to Washington to look things over.

>In the Senate:

William Langer of Bismarck, N. Dak., self-appointed champion of the underprivileged, tall, lean, sallow, with sparse grey hair, piercing eyes, a husky voice. A nondrinker, he chews cigars with the cellophane still on them, puts a friendly arm around anyone he is talking to.

Hugh Butler of Omaha, 62, white-haired, squarejawed, stocky, deceptively colorless, ran ahead of Willkie in Nebraska. Republican Butler campaigned almost entirely on farm issues. Twenty-five years ago, as a successful grain merchant, he decided to be a statesman. He became Rotary Governor, Doane College trustee, prominent as a Congregationalist. He met people all over the State, kept a card index of them, learned to remember names. When Nebraska’s G. O. P. fell on parlous times, he took the unwanted post of National Committeeman, acted bewildered, asked everybody for advice. These tactics won him thousands of friends. Four years ago he thought of running, sniffed the political weather, decided: No. This year he was ready. He campaigned for six months before the April 9 primary, visited each of Nebraska’s 529 towns. His itinerary was planned weeks ahead, to the day, to the hour. In each town a “key friend” rounded up a group for luncheon, dinner, or some sort of function. He won the primary over two former Governors and a Congressman.

Next day he started campaigning for November. He never loafed. Hiring a boy to drive him, he made every town, sleeping in the car between speeches. Butler had formed his own organization with one rule: no professionals. Butler’s reason: professional politicos wouldn’t do what they were told, would try to tell him what to do. He knew what to do.

By mid-August Butler was sure he’d win. He sold his house, moved into a $90-a-month duplex. Three weeks ago he began checking on what offices, what seat, what committees a Nebraska junior Senator might get. A week before Election Day he predicted his majority within 5,000 votes. Last week Tortoise Butler beat Hare Cochran, settled down to a brief vacation at his only hobbies: hunting, working on his farm, and playing “pitch.”

Ernest W. McFarland of Florence, Ariz., who beat Polysyllababbler Henry Fountain Ashurst to the Democratic nomination, is 45, ruddy, big-fisted, almost 6 ft., 180 lb., sober of habit, awkward but sincere in oratory. A county judge, he drawls, rides well, owns several farms and believes Communists should not vote.

> In the House:

Thaddeus F. B. Wasielewski of Milwaukee, Democrat, 35, 6 ft. 2, 204 lb., won over loudmouthed, rancorous, cankerous Representative John C. Schafer. (Even Republican colleagues used to whistle and hum while Schafer was making one of his splenetic speeches.) “I feel I ought to pinch myself,” said young Wasielewski last week.

Thomas H. Eliot of Cambridge, Democrat, 33, replaced baggy, antique Republican Robert Luce, chief of Luce’s Press Clipping Bureau. Eliot, handsome, dark, wavy-haired, erudite as his grandfather’s Five-Foot-Shelf, once rowed for Harvard, was a Boston Globe reporter, still likes to write Letters To The Editor. Eliot co-authored the present Social Security Act, was New England Wage-Hour Administrator when he decided to run. He and his wife made a house-to-house campaign.

William T. Pheiffer, 42, Republican, of New York’s famed Gashouse (16th) District, beat James H. Fay, New Dealer, who purged Old Dealer John J. O’Connor in 1938. Pheiffer and Republicans were stunned by his victory. Pheiffer was unknown, a Texan, a lawyer, a 21-month Republican resident of a sure Tammany district. It looked suspiciously as if Tammany, not liking New Dealer Fay, had decided to hand the district over for two years to a Republican.