Back to Privacy

Soon after Congress met last January, blue-blooded Representative Robert Low Bacon of Long Island introduced in the House a bill for repeal of the income tax publicity ("pink slip") clause of the 1934 Revenue Act. Wiseacres dismissed it as a footling political gesture, aimed solely to show J. P. Morgan, Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, Ogden L. Mills, William Averell Harriman and other members of Republican Bacon's ultra-rich constituency that his heart was in the right place.

Towering, robust Congressman Bacon, son of the late Ambassador to France, pulled a potent oar on Harvard's crew. After Harvard Law School he went into banking, dabbled in politics, went to war. His swank constituency has kept him steadily in Congress since 1923. Privately he moves in one of Washington's tightest little social sets, but among his fellow Congressmen he plays the good fellow with convincing affability. Ruddy, blue-eyed and handsome, he was once picked by famed Anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka as the ideal type of "future American." ("What are they trying to do, make a fool of me?" roared Aristocrat Bacon when he heard the news.) But despite all these distinctions, "Bob" Bacon, a regular member of the minority party, certainly did not look like the kind of man who could effect a major change in a major Democratic law.

Nonetheless Congressman Bacon boomed against the "invitation to snoopery" day in, day out, in & out of Congress. Simultaneously the Sentinels of the Republic swung into action. The Sentinels are 1,500 dues-paying and 10.000 non-paying patriots who have devoted themselves to sniping at Prohibition, the Child Labor Amendment, the Federal Office of Education and the New Deal. Last February they began to pepper Washington with petitions against the "pink slip," flood the land with letters, circulars, advertisements, radio speeches urging citizens to write their Congressmen about the "outrage." The time was politically ripe because taxpayers were just making out their Federal returns, filling in the facts about their income on the pink slips that went with each return. Suddenly amazed Senators and Representatives discovered that their anti-pink slip mail was running even stronger than the Townsend Plan tide. The Bacon bill, a Republican ugly duckling, was welcomed into the Administration family. When he thought it looked like a winner. Chairman Doughton of the House Ways & Means Committee tried to take the one-line repealer over as his own political property. Last month the House spent less than three hours in passing it 302-98 (TIME. March 25).

Last week the Senate got around to discussing "pink slip" repeal. California's McAdoo had it on the best authority, he solemnly announced, that the nation's widows and widowers were planning a mass scrutiny of pink slips in a hunt for wealthy mates. Texas' Connally said one of his constituents wanted the publicity provision repealed so that his inquisitive mother-in-law could not determine his income, get her allowance raised.

By a slip of his smooth tongue, Louisiana's Long blamed the repeal drive on the "bluted plotocracy." Up rose Maryland's Tydings to ask: "Since the Senator is so frank, what did he make last year?" "And what did he do with it?" put in West Virginia's Neely.

Chirped the "Kingfish": "I made about $25,000. ... I spent it for brass bands. football games and drinks for my friends. I.got some good out of it."

Such pleasantries exhausted, the Senate passed the repealer, 53-10-16, sent it to conference to iron out disagreement on a minor Senate amendment. After that, all that would remain for a return to old-fashioned privacy on income tax returns would be the President's signature.

Still on the books, however, is the "yellow sheet" law. It requires every corporation to list for Congressional inspection the name and total compensation of each officer or employe receiving $15.000 per year or more.

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