The Presidency: Down by the Old Mills Stream

“I read in the New York Times this morning,” President Kennedy told 7,000 listeners in the piney foothills of the Arkansas Ozarks last week, “that if Wilbur Mills requested it, I’d be glad to come down here and sing Down by the Old Mill Stream. I want to say I am delighted.” Kennedy meant what he said. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Arkansas Democrat Mills has powered three of the President’s principal pieces of legislation through the House: the tax and trade bills of 1962 and the tax-cut bill now before the Senate Finance Committee.

Mills had only to ask if the President would come down to dedicate a new federal dam in his congressional district, and John Kennedy was on his way.

Civil Wrongs. “Pound for pound,” said the President at the ceremonies, “I supposed the Arkansas delegation wields more influence in Congress than the delegation from any of the other 49 states. That could be good or bad. In this case it happens to be good.”*

Not so good was the lukewarm reception Kennedy got during his first foray into the South in 4½ months. Since then, the civil rights issue has glowed red-hot. At Greers Ferry Dam and at a Little Rock fair later in the day, the crowds were curious and courteous, but not enthusiastic. And Governor Orval Faubus, who contends that

Barry Goldwater could beat Kennedy in Arkansas today, was not even polite. With the President sitting six feet away at the dedication ceremonies, Faubus blasted the Administration’s civil rights program. Said he: “We observe a great deal of time and effort being spent in sponsoring unworkable proposals . . . that would go so far as to deprive a citizen of the right of trial by jury . . . and to take from the states even more of the rights guaranteed to them under the Constitution. To abridge or destroy these basic rights will constitute civil wrongs, even though the effort may masquerade under the name of civil rights.”

No Gentleman. Kennedy, when he took the rostrum, ignored the attack. Faubus claimed afterward that many Arkansans, outraged by Kennedy’s stand on civil rights, had urged him not to introduce the President. “I figured I’d have to say it to protect myself,” said he, “and I’d rather say it when he’s here than after he’s left.” Complained Little Rock’s Arkansas Gazette: “We might have wished that Mr. Faubus could have behaved himself like a gentleman for at least one day.”

* Besides Mills, who weighs 170, the all Democratic delegation includes Senator J. W. Fulbright, 165, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee; Senator John McClellan, 180, chairman of the investigation-prone Government Operations Committee; Representative Oren Harris, 165, chairman of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce; Representative Ezekiel C. Gathings, 168, noted mainly for his investigation of obscene literature; Representative James W. Trimble, 155, the delegation’s No. 1 liberal.