Bleeding Hearts

Fifty years ago when David John Lewis was an undersized boy of 16 working in a Pennsylvania coal mine, he could, like many another, neither read nor write.

Last week the House of Representatives gave David John Lewis an ovation worthy of one of its most erudite and social-minded members.

Though illiterate, young "Dave" Lewis learned the gift of eloquence from his father, a Welsh coal miner who was a Baptist preacher by avocation. At 20, Son Lewis went to a labor meeting and spoke so stirringly that a newshawk said to him: " Boy, you ought to be a lawyer." At 23, Lewis was. And ten years later, having settled at Cumberland. Md., he began a political career, long, thorny, courageous.

In 1902, as a member of the Maryland legislature, Mr. Lewis outraged Conservatives by proposing an unheard of thing, a workmen's compensation law. In 1912, as a member of Congress, he made express companies frantic by drafting the law under which the U. S. now has a parcel post system. President Wilson appointed him to the Tariff Commission. He declined reappointment in 1925 because President Coolidge demanded that he sign an undated resignation.

In 1931, white-haired and wizened, David Lewis went back to Congress, one of the curiosities of politics, a scholar and a man of principle. With physics as his hobby, he is a member of the American Academy of Sciences. His studies are principally history, sociology and economics. No pains are too great when he is investigating a subject. When he was studying improvements in the U. S. parliamentary system, he learned French in order to verify a translation from de Tocqueville. So that his constituents cannot interrupt his studies, he keeps his home address in Washington to himself, has a secret office in the old House Office Building with a door that cannot be opened from the outside.

Three years ago, Representative Lewis proposed a bill for nation-wide unemployment and old age insurance. The Hoover Administration was not interested. Last year he introduced another bill geared to the New Deal. This year when President Roosevelt proposed Social Security legislation, David John Lewis was Johnny-on-the-spot with a third measure to carry out his wishes (TIME, Jan. 28). But unemployment insurance and old age pensions were too politically popular a matter for the Marylander to keep for himself. Chairman Robert Lee Doughton of the Ways & Means Committee shoved his way into the spotlight with a bill so similar that the Government Printing Office ran off copies from the plates made for the Lewis one. Then Chairman Doughton wangled a lower number for his bill which would place it ahead of the Lewis measure upon the House calendar. Mr. Lewis protested against this attempt to rob him of his legislative rights. But the bill that was before the House last week had been rewritten in committee, given a new number and christened "Doughton." Congressmen wondered whether Representative Lewis would be embittered and oppose the measure when he marched down into the House well to make a speech.

''Gentlemen of the House," he declared, "we are at the crossroads of history. . . . We are developing a new class in America. It is those men and women who at 45 years of age have reached the age limit of employability. They are turned away on the basis of their age. I christen them 'America's untouchables!' . . . Even under slavery, the slave owner did not fail to feed and clothe and doctor the slaves no matter what might happen to crops or to markets. . . . Fellow members of the American House of Commons . . . the world does not owe a man a living, I grant you, but as sure as God rules the heavens, it does owe him a chance to earn a living. . . . This measure is only a small effort to give the disemployed equality before the law."

Members leaped to their feet, shouting, clapping, cheering, as little Mr. Lewis gathered up his papers and scuttled to a seat near the door. There Representatives pressed about him, wrung his hand. He had set the keynote for the oratory that was to follow. Seldom have the hearts of Congressmen bled so copiously and so eloquently as they did last week for constituents who would benefit most from this legislation.

"Mr. Chairman," cried William Irving Sirovich of Manhattan, "life is a journey on the road to death. . . . This humane legislation begins with the queen and angel of the home, the mother. Since God could not be everywhere he created mothers to take His place."

"What," demanded William M. Colmer, of Pascagoula, Miss., "can more deeply stir the finer thoughts and sympathies . . . than the picture presented by an aged person who has worn himself out in wholesome service to his family, his country and his God?"

"I can see," cried Claude A. Fuller of Eureka Springs, Ark., "the expectant mother, weak from worry, overwork and undernourishment ... I can see the careworn, dejected widow . . . with her youngest child upon her knee and others clustered by her, kissing the tears of joy from her pale cheek. ... I see the grey-headed father and mother, bowed by the weight of many years of honest toil, dance with joy upon receipt of their first pension check which saves them from the poorhouse."

Some Congressional hearts bled more profusely than others, with the result that the House was swamped with amendments to liberalize the benefits of the Social Security bill. Offered, only to be thumbed down by a topheavy majority, were the Townsend Plan, with $200 per month pensions for all over 60 (TIME, Jan. 14); the Lundeen Plan, with a minimum of $10 per week payments to all jobless; the Treadway Plan and the Greenway-Scrugham Plan to boost Federal contributions to state old age pensions above a $15 per month maximum. Though possibly not one member out of five understood the implications of the bill or its probable consequences, the House was overwhelmingly of the opinion that Social Security was a good thing politically to vote for, a dangerous thing to vote against. Result: Passage, 371-to-33.

"We got no orders from the President, so help me Almighty God!" proudly declared Speaker Byrns,. and Chairman Doughton boasted that what was once the Lewis Bill was "probably the most far-reaching piece of legislation ever considered by the American Congress."

The House, in short, had voted financial help to states which set up unemployment insurance and old age pensions, as well as a Federal system of annuities to retire workers beginning in 1942. To support the unemployment insurance and old age annuity systems, there were to be imposed payroll and pay envelope taxes. Beginning in 1936, employers would be taxed 1% on their payrolls, rising to 6% by 1952, when employes would also be taxed 3% out of their pay envelopes. The total, $2,800,000 a year, would in the end be paid by the public in the form of higher prices, thus adding 70% to the $4,000,000,000 "normally" collected by the Government. But 1952 is a long way off in any Congressman's political horoscope and the Senate has yet to grapple with the House bill.

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