Even Steven

Great was the tension in the Senate last week as that body approached a vote on the export debenture feature of its farm relief bill. Informal polls showed an almost even balance of sentiment for and against the proposal to allow, to farm surplus exporters, bounties equal to one-half the tariff rates on their commodities. There were 47 Senators opposed to debentures, 46 Senators in favor, one Senator undecided, one Senator sick and not yet sworn in. With the outcome so uncertain, Vice President Charles Curtis braced him self for the emergency of having to vote to break a tie. How would he vote? asked Senators under their breath. In the Coolidge era, as Kansas Senator and presidential candidate, he had voted once for and once against the equalization fee, of which the debenture plan is the equivalent in the Hoover era.

Shipstead's Oath. So narrow seemed the margin of votes that Senate Clerk John C. Crockett was despatched to Baltimore, there to establish a precedent by swearing in a Senator for the first time outside the Senate Chamber. Senator Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota, Farmer-Laborite, had been ill with influenza and complications since before March 4. He lay in a hospital bed in Baltimore. The administration of the oath by Clerk Crockett made him eligible to cast his vote for the debenture plan. That made 47 to 47 in the informal poll, resting the issue with Louisiana's Broussard, the undecided Senator, a Democrat. "Nose-Holding." Southern Democrats could give the condition of the cotton planters as their reason for voting an unDemocratic subsidy, which is what the debenture plan amounts to. But Northern, city Democrats could give as their only reason a partisan desire to put President Hoover in a hole. As in 1924, they found themselves playing catspaw for the Progressive Republicans. New York's Copeland, for example, said he would vote for the debenture plan, but "hold his nose" while he did so. Shifter Nye. North Dakota's Nye (Progressive) had declared against the debenture plan. Last week, under threats of political reprisals from his state, he said he would now support it. He added lamely a hope that it would never be used. "The People." The new Kansas Senator, Henry Justin Allen, made his first speech in the Senate, supporting the President's opposition to debentures. When he said, "the people who sent me here--!" a time-honored congressional cliche, there were grins on the Democratic side, snickers in the gallery. As everyone but the Senator recalled, the "people" who sent Senator Allen were not the voters of Kansas. They were General Counsel James Francis Burke of the Republican National Committee and Secretary of War James William Good, who requested Governor Clyde Reed of Kansas to give Mr. Allen the seat left vacant by Vice President Curtis. Norris Amendment. Without a roll call, the Senate adopted an amendment by Nebraska's Senator Norris designed to meet President Hoover's criticism that the debenture plan would cause overproduction and increase instead of decrease crop surpluses. The Norris amendment would set up the crop production of the last five years as an average. When production swelled too much, debenture payments would shrink. Many a Senator was quick to point out that the exportable crop surplus would have to double before debenture payments started down. The adoption of this Norris amendment postponed the final showdown of strength.