National Affairs: 25 Lousy Cents!

Five Southern Democrats and four Republicans sat smiling at a lady one day last week in the cramped, dim-lit House Rules committee-room on the third floor of the Capitol. The nine smug gentlemen, key bloc of the conservative coalition now dominating the House, could afford to be gracious to hard-plugging Mary Norton, Labor committee chairlady, because they had just finished trampling roughshod over her.

Buxom Mrs. Norton, no tearful, bumbling matron but a toughened politician of Mayor Frank Hague’s hard-boiled Jersey City school, well knew what was about to happen. For while her New Deal colleague, ancient Adolph Sabath of Illinois, sat at the head of the long billiard-baized table as Rules Chairman, all eyes watched the committee’s real overseer, Eugene (“Goober”) Cox of Georgia, head hatchet-man of the conservatives.

Mrs. Norton repeated her plea of many months: that the committee either grant an out-&-out “gag” rule to her New-Deal-approved amendments to the wage-hour law when they reached the House floor, or grant no rule at all. Chairlady Norton, whose crisp black (undyed) hair belies by 20 years her age (64), feared the committee would grant her only an “open” rule. That would let Graham Barden of North Carolina substitute on the House floor his own wage-hour amendments, which are anathema to the New Deal. Mr. Barden’s amendments would take 2,000,000 workers out of wage-hour law benefits; permit their employers to pay less than 25¢ an hour, work them more than 44 hours per week.

Only too well Mary Norton realized that Barden’s amendments would pass on the House floor with a whoop and a holler, in the present rattlesnake mood of that chamber.

After a confused, bitter session, “Goober” Cox and his eight stalwarts held off action, countered with the proposition that Mrs. Norton’s committee confer the next day with both warring factions of organized labor and representatives of U. S. business in an effort to reach an all-around compromise. Trap-mouthed “Goober” Cox knew as well as Mrs. Norton that nothing but hot words would emanate from such a session. So the nine Congressmen smiled, and Mrs. Norton trudged wearily away to arrange the “conference.”

At 10 a.m. next morning, only one man knew how hot would be the words at that session. This was Labormaster John L. Lewis, the first—and next-to-last—witness. Solemnly and heavily he sat in the witness-chair, his coal-miner’s pallor* heightened by his rumpled white suit, a Havana perfecto gripped deep in his big chops. In his usual low rumble he began to speak. Gradually the rumble rolled up into a basso roar as his jowls filled with rage. He pounded the committee-table till the ashtrays jumped, then exploded in a statement which will be remembered long after the election of 1940:

“This spectacle . . . where the Republican minority, aided by a band of 100 or more renegade Democrats, has conducted a war dance around the bounden, prostrate form of labor in the well of that House, whirling like dervishes and dancing with glee when [it] is able to do something to hamstring labor. . . .”

“All labor asks is … 25 lousy cents an hour.”

“The genesis of this campaign against labor in the House of Representatives is not hard to find. It is within the Democratic party. It runs across to the Senate of the United States and emanates there from a labor-baiting, poker-playing, whiskey-drinking, evil old man whose name is Garner.”

Committeemen gasped. Several spectators stood up. Lewis pounded on:

“Some gentlemen may rise in horror and say, ‘Why, Mr. Lewis has made a personal attack on Mr. Garner.’ Yes, I make a personal attack on Mr. Garner for what he is doing, because Garner’s knife is searching for the quivering, pulsating heart of labor. And I am against him.

“I am against him officially, individually and personally, concretely and in the abstract, when his knife searches for the heart of my people. I am against him in 1939 and I will be against him in 1940 when he seeks the Presidency of the United States.”

There was a lot more, but no one listened. Then the room was still. Lewis finished. Mary Norton said mechanically: “I thank you for your very fine contribution to this meeting.” (Next day, when she caught her breath, Mrs. Norton said she was “displeased” with Mr. Lewis’ statement.)

Repercussions came immediately, spread throughout the U. S. Attorney General Frank Murphy, whose dark red eyebrows are ranked third in Washington below Lewis’ and Garner’s, had a reporter reread Lewis’ statement to him, chuckled heartily, said aloud: “That’s too eloquent for comment,” then sotto voce to a nearby reporter: “It’s a sinful world.” (Mr. Murphy and the entire press section of the Justice Department spent the rest of that day and evening, in hasty afterthought, insisting he had not correctly understood the statement.)

Before nightfall Lewis’ crack at Garner had become a national gag. Bibbers lifted highballs with happy cries of “Well, here goes, you whiskey-drinking, poker-playing, evil old man.” Columnists’ consensus was that old tomato-nosed John Garner now had the drinking and card-playing vote locked up solidly for 1940.

John Garner read the statement, chuckled, said “No comment.” Newshawks began checking, soon learned that “Cactus Jack” quit high-stake poker about 1920, has since played seldom and then for “buttons.”* All top-rank correspondents know John Garner’s drinking habits. He likes bonded rye, will occasionally go for good corn, scorns soda, ice and fancy fixings, pours water-tumblers half-full, says “Let’s strike a blow for liberty” and chases with a little “branch-water” out of the faucet. He has never been seen drunk or even lightly groggy. After 6 p. m. for some 15 years he has either played a few hands of rummy with his wife-secretary, Ettie, or sat with her on the Washington Hotel roof, his belt loosened, his high-laced shoes cocked on the railing, deliberately picking his teeth and yawning. Never later than 9:30 p. m. he is in bed, barring only one or two top social functions of the year.

No one whatsoever may telephone him after that hour.

Having said his say, John Lewis, still pale, sat all that afternoon out at his huge walnut desk in the palatial United Mine Workers building, drumming fingers steadily on his desk, speaking gruffly and seldom.

In the House a maddened Texas delegation composed a resolution praising Garner to the skies, then hastily recalled it from the House press gallery, clipped out one sentence (“He has been a friend of labor for 30 years”) and sent it back retyped. A two-minute standing ovation, with applause rent with rebel yells, came when the resolution was read in the House. Only a few New Dealers kept their seats. In the Senate word came around from Boss Garner that he wanted no speeches, demonstration or even mention of the incident.

But unavoidably Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada had to bring it up the next day. Author of an amendment to the Spend-Lend Bill, to restore prevailing wage-rates on WPA projects, he admitted his cause had been “greatly impaired.” The Senate quickly slapped down his amendment.

Repercussions continued. Unpurged Millard Tydings of Maryland tried to add to the Spend-Lend Bill a rider prohibiting any organization from contributing to a political campaign-fund any money not specifically assessed for that purpose. (This was aimed at the famed $470,000 loan by Lewis’ United Mine Workers to the Democratic party in 1936.)

President Roosevelt had no comment. But the House Rules committee acted swiftly, reported on equal terms four wage-hour bills: Barden’s, Mrs. Norton’s, another Norton bill containing only non-controversial amendments, and one by Georgia’s Ramspeck without exemptions for farm workers.

In all the verbal slugging, scrambling and hell-raising, most people forgot that the entire House situation was only shadowboxing, since the Senate could not and would not even begin action on wage-hour legislation at this session. But the intensity of the fight revealed more clearly than ever the New Deal’s slipping grip on Capitol Hill.

*It is 30 years since Lewis was a miner. *In his heyday, in an abandoned committee room known as “The Boar’s Nest,” Garner regularly nicked Nick Longworth, Ogden Mills, Joe Cannon—all since dead. His biggest winnings in any one session: $15,000. Biggest loss in any one night: $6,800. Average over the years: unknown but believed very good.