Rainey for Speaker

Tennessee, Tammany and Texas combined last week to name the new Speaker of the House--Henry Thomas Rainey of Illinois. Out of the deal Tennessee got the floor leadership. Tammany the assistant floor leadership, Texas the chairmanship of the potent Committee on Appropriations.

Before 301 Democratic members of the 73rd Congress marched into the House chamber, bolted the doors and settled down on the black leather seats for a party caucus, there were three outstanding candidates for the Speakership vacated by John Nance Garner. Big, white-mopped Representative Rainey, 72, considered himself "in line" for the job because he had been majority floor leader in the 72nd House (TIME, Dec. 19). Tennessee's Joseph Wellington Byrns, 63, lank, hollow-eyed chairman of the Appropriations Committee, was put forward as a border compromise between North and South. Alabama's John McDuffie, 49, popular party "whip" and loyal Garner friend, was the conservative South's man to perpetuate the outgoing Speaker's regime.

The three-way deal dominated the caucus from the start. Withdrawing from the major contest, Representative Byrns nominated Representative Rainey for Speaker after which Representative Rainey nominated Representative Byrns for majority leader. Tammany, always partial to a winner, swung its votes behind the Rainey-Byrns ticket in return for the appointment as assistant majority leader of stocky, hard-bitten Thomas Henry Cullen from the Red Hook district of Brooklyn. Jumping the South's traces, Texas joined the Rainey-Byrns-Cullen combination because its success would advance Representative James Paul Buchanan, a Texan, to the Appropriations Committee chairmanship vacated by Mr. Byrns.

Against such massed strength the Mc-Duffie ticket was helpless. Representative Rainey went up, 166 to 112, for Speaker, with other "deal" candidates winning handily. The vote sent glimmering Vice President Garner's aspiration to run the House from the Senate rostrum. In his place the House Democrats had picked an oldster of 28 years service, a lawyer-turned-farmer, a low-tariff sales-taxer, a radical of yesterday with whose advanced ideas the country is just catching up.

Representative Rainey's victory did not come without a major concession in power and prestige. Heretofore Democratic Speakers have always run the House without a "steering committee" such as Republicans regularly employ. Speaker Rainey was ready to take orders from a committee of twelve chosen geographically to represent the will of the party in the House.

When the new House meets, the formality of electing its Speaker will occur. New York's Republican Snell will get about 117 votes. With 313 votes Democrat Rainey will be elevated to the rostrum to take legislative command of the New Deal.

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