THE CONGRESS: Southern Statesman

As unique as its cooking is the South’s propensity for sending strange characters as its ambassadors to the U. S. Senate. Because of the political degeneracy of the one-party system, the incompetence of the Deep South’s voters or the type of man who there goes out for public life, the Senate has in late years suffered such people as Alabama’s Heflin, South Carolina’s Blease, Georgia’s Watson, Louisiana’s Long, Mississippi’s Vardaman. Mississippi, where Jefferson Davis lived, where the illiteracy rate is fourth highest in the U. S., where poverty is said to have driven “all the good niggers” over into Alabama, last week fairly outdid itself in the matter of picking a U.S. Senator. In the Democratic run-off primary a sizable majority of that State’s electorate preferred Theodore Gilmore Bilbo to all comers.

Theodore Bilbo was born 56 years ago on a back-country farm in south Mississippi. One of eight children, he worked as a laundryman, mill hand and news butcher to pay his way through college. From his book learning he drew dividends by teaching mathematics and Latin for six years at Aaron Academy, Nicholson High School, in grade schools at Bayou Encent, Anner, Kiln and Wiggins. At this time he was licensed but not ordained as a Southern Baptist minister. And then he got into politics.

It soon became apparent to Theodore Bilbo that his camp-meeting, rabble-rousing rant had a definite appeal for rural “red necks.” He became known as ”The Pearl of Pearl River County,” sometimes called himself “The Old Maestro of the Stump,” but more often simply referred to himself in the third person as “The Man Bilbo.” He was sent to the State Legislature where he openly admitted taking bribes, but was acquitted by a jury. In 1916 he became Governor. In his first term he began a widely ballyhooed public building program of insane asylums, reform schools, tuberculosis sanatoria. There was the usual graft and corruption, but he managed to place his good friend Lee Maurice Russell in the Governor’s chair when he retired after his four-year term.

In 1923 a stenographer at the State Capitol sued Governor Russell for seduction and ex-Governor Bilbo was called as a witness. Bilbo is no prude, but he did not want to be drawn into a friend’s girl trouble. He hid out in a backwoods farm until Governor Russell was acquitted.

Then Bilbo was nabbed, haled into court on a contempt charge, sentenced to 30 days in the Oxford jail. At Oxford the chancellor of the University of Mississippi saw that Bilbo had three square meals a day. Released after ten days, Bilbo walked out of jail, climbed up on the back of a wagon, announced his second candidacy for the Governorship. During this campaign he took cognizance of State-wide gossip about his sex life. To a female audience The Man Bilbo cried: ”If these stories about The Man Bilbo are true, you’ve got to admit, Sisters, he’s a MAN!”

By a narrow margin he lost the run-off primary, but four years later he became the first Governor of Mississippi ever to serve a second term. In that term he wrecked the State’s credit. In one swoop he angrily fired 179 State College officials & faculty members, remarking: “Boys, we’ve just hung up a new record!” So discredited was he that he refused to call a special tax session of the Legislature because its members would not first promise not to impeach him (TIME, June 22, 1931). His prime enemy was a roly-poly politician from Seminary named Martin Sennett (“Sure Mike”) Conner. On the walls of the Governor’s office hung an almost life-size picture of a skeleton, with MIKE CONNER written on its skull. In 1932 “Sure Mike” Conner took the picture down when he moved in as Governor.

Stumpster Bilbo, who stops at no forensic device, is a bad man to have for a political foe. In 1928 he delivered Mississippi to Al Smith 5-to-1, “me a Baptist, a dry and a Ku Klux Klansman,” largely by this stratagem: In a Memphis burlesque theatre he announced that during the 1927 flood Herbert Hoover got off a train at Mound Bayou, Miss. and danced on the station platform with a Negro woman. George Akerson, Hoover’s aide-de-camp, had a hard time refuting this canard without offending either white or black voters. “It was just like asking old High-Collar Herbert if he had quit beating his wife.” chuckled Statesman Bilbo. “He couldn’t say yes and he couldn’t say no.”

Mississippi was practically bankrupt when Theodore Bilbo left the Governor’s mansion in 1932 and so was he. Last year he could not raise $500 to settle a claim against his $75,000 “dream home” at Poplarville, where he grows pecans. A cousin took the place over and Democrat Bilbo was delighted to get a $6,000-a-year job in Washington clipping newspapers for AAA in an office across the hall from the men’s toilet (TIME, July 3, 1933). It looked as if the runty, pistol-scarred backwoodsman was politically through. But when he heard that the Senate Commerce Committee, on which sat Mississippi’s junior Senator Hubert Durrett Stephens, was considering the appointment of Dr. Willard Thorp as an expert for the Department of Commerce, Clipper Bilbo pricked up his large ears. When he learned that Dr. Thorp had once registered as a Republican while at Amherst, he dropped his shears and paste, scuttled back to Mississippi with the news that Senator Stephens was about to give a $9,000 job to a “damn Yankee” Republican. Pulling on his red campaign necktie, adjusting his diamond stickpin and purchasing the oldest and most dilapidated car he could find, Theodore Bilbo began to stump the State for Senator Stephens’ job.

The Roosevelt Administration had never had much support from quiet, sly Mr. Stephens, but now it tried to save him. Secretary Marvin H. Mclntyre sent him a wire elaborately requesting his presence at the White House in the middle of the campaign. Third candidate was Representative Ross Collins, who went out in the first primary but Senator Stephens’ lead was so slight that a run-off was called.

Again appealing to the lowest “white trash” in the State, The Man Bilbo made many a vote when “red necks” recalled his old story to the effect that Senator Stephens’ father, when a State legislator, had favored the appointment of a Negro over a Confederate veteran for Capitol doorman. He adopted a 27-point platform, promising redistribution of wealth, old age pensions, unemployment insurance, “controlled inflation,” revision of the Federal Reserve System, immediate cash payment of the Bonus for “the soldier boys.” Depending on the mood of his listeners, he either declared himself a devoted supporter of Franklin Roosevelt or flayed the President for being “a New York Yankee surrounded by a brain trust.” It was predicted in Mississippi that Bilbo would lose the primary unless a “pretty day” brought out a strong rural vote. On primary day Mississippi had a “pretty day.”

“God bless the people!” telephoned Bilbo to his Jackson supporters following a nomination that was equivalent to election. “I knew they would elect me. I’ll be there tomorrow to help arrange the celebration.” Arrived at Jackson, he promised: “I’ll make as much noise for the common people as Huey P. Long and raise the same kind of hell as President Roosevelt!”

First reaction of outsiders was that Huey Long had added Mississippi to his dominion. But those who know The Man Bilbo and his State thought otherwise. He is less shrewd, less ambitious than Huey Long, lacks the “Kingfish” lust for personal power. All he cares about is a well-paying Government job.

One of the most nervous and embarrassed men in Washington last week was Mississippi’s Senator Pat Harrison whose duty it will be on Jan. 3 to escort Mississippi’s Senator Theodore Gilmore Bilbo down the Senate aisle to take the oath and then introduce him to the other members of the most snobbish political club in the land.