More Misery

Coincident with the bursting new Bonus issue (see above), a battered but not yet exhausted older issue last week raised its head and made an extra session of Congress appear almost inevitable. This issue was Human Misery, rallying cry of the man who during the past few weeks has developed into the Senate's leading altruist--Joseph Taylor Robinson of Arkansas. Shocked by Red Cross Chairman John Barton Payne's refusal to accept the $25,000,000 which he had attached as a rider to the Interior Department's supply bill (see p. 22), Minority Leader Robinson proposed that the Senate find another medium for distributing its relief to Drought-stricken farmers and unemployed city dwellers. But the House, to which the measure had been sent, voted his rider out of the Interior Department appropriation 224-to-90. Human Misery thereupon changed from a political football into the central object in a game of parliamentary touch-football.

Emerging from a Democratic caucus, Senator Robinson--who was such an avowed Administration cooperator in December that his followers accused him of "going White House"--defiantly flung his party's challenge. He announced that he had no other choice than to tack his relief amendment onto all subsequent supply bills, unless Congress would immediately vote $50,500,000 worth of relief legislation, plus 20,000,000 bu. of Farm Board wheat to feed the hungry. Senator Robinson listed his requirements as follows:

Food loans $15,000,000

Interior Department

Relief fund 25,000,000

Rural sanitation 3,000,000

Reappropriation to finance

Agricultural corporations. 5,000,000 Reappropriation for seed and

Fertilizer in the Southeast

2,500,000

$50,500,000

Proclaimed Senator Robinson's colleague, Senator Caraway: "Every day we wait, 1,000 people die of starvation.* Somebody is dooming American people to a premature death. I'd like to know who are the ones playing politics at this time."

In the face of deadlock, Senator Borah proposed a compromise of $15,000,000 to be used solely for Drought sufferers. But this found little favor with the Democrats. And Republican House Leader Tilson said: "In connection with the proposed $25,000,000 dole, there is no place for compromise."

Then up rose Senator Borah to thunder one of those speeches which stir men's hearts and make the Senate seem really a national forum instead of an old men's bickering society. He announced that if Leader Tilson of the House was going to make it a matter of principle, then he, Borah of the Senate, accepted the challenge.

"So far as the drouth regions are concerned," he thundered, "no new principle is presented to the American people. . . . Everyone concedes that the conditions in the South are due to what we are prone to call an Act of God. The people . . . have been visited by a drouth which has been as devastating, as cruel and as remorseless as a flood or an earthquake. . . .

"We are simply proposing to deal with a condition which has again and again been presented to the Congress of the United States. . . . When before . . . when there has been a fire or a flood or an earthquake, has there been talk about establishing a dole? In no sense does the dole system apply. . . .

"When a drouth occurred in the Volga in Russia we appropriated money to take care of those there in distress. When drouth occurs in the Mississippi Valley we have proposed to make another appropriation. . .

"Does anyone believe that those proud self-reliant American citizens would ask for a dollar from the treasury of the United States one moment after their affliction had departed?

"I doubt if, out of the million and a half people who are afflicted by reason of the drouth, there is a single man or woman who has ever asked a favor of the Government of the United States. How happy they would be if conditions were restored and nature should smile upon them again and they should be able to take care of their own, feed and clothe their own! How happy they would be to be relieved of the humiliation of going to the Government for help! . . .

"So I say, speaking for myself, I accept the challenge of the gentleman from the other end of the Capitol. Let us have it out. I do not propose, as a member of this body, to surrender upon that principle. I do not propose to accept the implication and the slur. We will either feed these people, or we will stay here and tell the American people why we do not feed them!"

The Democrats were on their feet cheering. The gallery stormed applause. Administration Senators sat in silence, bewildered by an attack to which they had no answer. Greater than ever loomed the issue of Human Misery, now directly joined between the Senate's greatest orator and the President. Clearer than ever, if the President elected to fight on with his cohorts in the House, loomed the certainty of an extra session of a filibustered Congress.

*The Red Cross had discovered up to last week not one case of death by starvation, even in Senator Caraway's hungry Arkansas.

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