Glass v. Cutting

Day before adjournment when the pension fight was at its hottest & heaviest in the Senate, Virginia's peppery little Carter Glass, his nerves rubbed raw with the strain of the session, uprose to flay greedy veterans. From the corner of his mouth he snarled:

"I voted against the Bonus and I never cast a vote of which I was prouder. I had two boys in the front-line trenches, one of them being nearly killed. I had a nephew there who was gassed so badly that he will never recover. I had a sister in a hospital in France and two daughters in the hospitals here to relieve trained nurses. I would not want ever to speak to one of them again if they would join in the raid upon the Federal Treasury made by people who have never suffered any disability and thousands of them who got better treatment, better clothing, better food, better discipline after they went into the service.

"When he comes out of the combat without wounds, without disability, a veteran has no right to raid the Treasury perpetually because he was called into the contest--called in under draft, too, when it was a question of being shot here or shot at abroad."

At this a ripple of laughter ran around the Senate chamber, was duly reported in the Congressional Record. Next day when New Mexico's wealthy dapper Bronson Cutting, protagonist for increased pensions, spotted the tell-tale "(Laughter)" in the Record, he stormed into the Senate chamber, raised his lisping voice in anger:

"That 'Laughter' is the most disgraceful word ever written into the Congressional Record. Didn't the Senator from Virginia revise his remarks?"--

"An infamous suggestion!" The little Virginian was now mad clean through. '"And I don't say that under the shelter of constitutional immunity, either. You have suggested that I interpolated the word 'laughter' in the Record."

"I did not," shouted back Senator Cutting. "I implied that if you saw the word 'laughter,' the most ordinary sense of justice would have led you to strike it out."

"I'm not in the habit of falsifying the Record, even if the Senator from New Mexico is." "We are all fond of the Senator from Virginia. He takes advantage of that fact to insult his colleagues freely."

The presiding officer's gavel put an end to that wrangle. Further debate culminated in a vote on the pension bill. Meantime, the seeds of a new discussion had been planted in the minds of Senators Cutting and Glass. Just before adjournment was voted, the little Virginian rose once more.

"Never before was I so astonished in my life." he declared. "He said that I had presumed upon the affection of my colleagues, upon the esteem in which they held me. to insult them at my pleasure. I challenge any Senator here to search this Record in either house for 32 years to show where I ever initiated a dispute. I had the greatest esteem for the Senator from New Mexico. Why, I had so high a regard for his character and intelligence that I advocated his appointment to the President's Cabinet and urged him to accept the position of Secretary of the Interior."

Picking up the question of who was whose friend. Senator Cutting concluded: "I am not going to initiate any kind of a feud with my distinguished friend from Virginia. I think just as highly of him as I did. I hope he may hold some share of the esteem for me he says he has held. This issue is not a personal one. . . ."

--A reference to the Congressional practice of editing proofs of speeches before their appearance in print.

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