74th's Wind-Up

The House was dog-tired at the end of the hardest week of the session. It was ready for adjournment at midafternoon, and voted it. But over at the other end of the Capitol, West Virginia's stripling Senator Rush Dew Holt had led--strangely enough, since it was the United Mine Workers who had helped elect him and John L. Lewis was frowning down from the gallery and cursing him for a traitor-- a filibuster against the substitute Guffey Coal Control Bill. Spelled by colleagues eager to speak their pieces in the nation's ear for the last time this year, Senator Holt kept the filibuster going through the afternoon and evening, at one time piping passages from Aesop's Fables in his youthful tenor. It was 11:55 Prn. when the Senate finally gave in. But the House, though too tired for adjournment horseplay, could not stop talking. Not until 12:39 a. m. did Speaker Bankhead's gavel ring to a halt the listless end of the 74th Congress' listless second & last session.

It is Congress' custom to make a farce of the term "deliberative assembly" in its last week, jam through more bills than it has passed in any previous week. But in the political year 1936 the 74th Congress, tardy because of its recess for the Republican convention and straining to be through in time for the Democratic convention, outdid most of its predecessors. Important bills enacted last week:

P: Tax

P: First Deficiency, providing $1,425,000,000 for President Roosevelt to spend on Relief in almost any way he pleases except to continue the Florida Ship Canal.

P: Anti-Chain Store, to protect independent merchants by forbidding fake discounts and rebates to chain purchasers, empowering the Federal Trade Commission to fix maximum discounts on quantity purchases (TIME, March 16).

P: Government Contracts, establishing an NRA-like code of wages and working conditions (8-hour day, 40-hour week, prevailing wages) for manufacturers and distributors who sell the Government at least $10,000 worth of goods per year. Expected to affect 75% of the nation's industry, it brought a prompt protest from steelmen who argued that Government supplies were a minor part of their business.

P: Ship Subsidy, substituting a forthright system of direct subsidies to shippers for the current indirect and unsavory system of padded ocean-mail contracts. To expand the U. S. merchant marine, the Government will pay up to half the cost of building a ship, lend the operator half of the remainder, pay him an operating subsidy based on the difference between U. S. and foreign costs.

P: Treasury-Post Office Supply: $992,524,892.

Major measures passed by one house and killed by the other last week: Coal Control, Housing, Pure Food & Drugs. Rejected by the House, the Black Lobby Registration bill was not brought to a Senate vote.

The second session of the 74th Congress will be remembered chiefly because it passed the $1,936,213,950 Bonus and appropriated $7,240,216,913 besides AAA, topping the $9,579,756,510 it voted in its first session.

The 75th Congress will convene Jan. 5, 1937. Reason: the official date of Jan. 3 is a Sunday; the Senate last week voted to convene on Monday; the House--reasserting the authority which it has so ignominiously relinquished this session-- made it Tuesday.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.