Amity or Issues?

Congress last week completed some three months of its session, a period marked by unusual legislative progress and a great deal of amity, all things considered. The tactics of the minority in the Senate who fought the World Court to the last ditch produced the only approach to a really good fight that this session of Congress has seen. There is something wrong about this situation. There should be trouble and plenty of it. This is an election year. In only a few weeks the primaries begin. In less than eight months a new Congress will be elected. And where are the issues of the campaign?

The only issue of any consequence so far created is the World Court. The Progressive Republicans seem intent to press this as far as they can against regular Republicans in states where there is irreconcilable sentiment, such states as Wisconsin and Illinois.

But what for an issue between Democrats and Republicans? It has been many times asserted that the Democrats are trying very hard to force an issue. They attempted last week to lay hold on one by ordering an investigation of the Aluminum Co. of America. They failed by a narrow margin.

They very nearly had an issue in the anthracite coal strike, when suddenly that strike ceased.

There has been repeated talk of reviving the tariff issue and that possibility is still open, but no ambitious undertaking in that direction has been marked out, and at a time when the country is as prosperous as at present that issue loses some of its appeal.

Two issues more or less local from a political standpoint may yet develop. One of them is farm legislation. The difficulty is that it is not yet obvious just what sort of legislation the farmers want or will be satisfied with, although it is clear enough that the result they want is better crop prices. The other issue is an anti-lynching bill. If this bill comes up in the Senate, the Southerners will undertake a filibuster, an attempt may be made to supply cloture (limit the debate), and the irreconcilables may join the regular Republicans in the cloture move in order to get revenge on the Southerners who helped to impose cloture on the World Court. In that event a first-class parliamentary wrangle may ensue, but it is hard to see how as an issue anything might come of it except in the solid South.

One major possibility remains, the Italian debt settlement. This will meet opposition in the Senate as bitter and perhaps more forceful than it met in the House. Attempts have been made to line up the Democrats against it, but until recently these attempts have not succeeded. A number of prominent Democrats, notably Messrs. Underwood, Glass and Bruce, have stood out against making a fight on this issue. The Administration has stood solidly behind the settlement, contending not only that it is the best that can be got, but the only way of insuring any money at all from Italy. A combination of Democrats and Republican Progressives might defeat the settlement, but the Administration still believes it can succeed in getting it passed.

If the Italian debt settlement is not made into an issue, there is the possibility that politicians of both parties may go to the electorate next fall with the same cry, "We helped to give you tax reduction!"