Aunt Mary's Applecart

As chairman of the House Labor Committee, amiable Mary ("Aunt Mary") Norton has had a difficult and busy year. She inherited her job when Massachusetts' able young Bill Connery died a year ago. With it, she inherited the thankless chore of trying to push a stiff Wages-&-Hours Bill past an unsympathetic Rules Committee and then through a recalcitrant House. Mary Norton did the best she could. This was to get a majority (218) of House members to sign a petition discharging the committee and bringing the bill to the floor last December, where Aunt Mary's colleagues upset the applecart by voting it down.

Last winter Mary Norton and the Labor Committee set to work producing a new bill. Essentially milder than its original, it called for a 25-c--an-hour minimum wage, a 44-hour maximum week, graded to a 4O-c--an-hour minimum over the next three years and a 40-hour maximum over the next two. However, it lacked the regional differential which had been its predecessor's concession to Southern industry's cherished conviction that climatic and racial conditions below the Mason & Dixon line entitle its workers to a lower wage scale. Consequently no one was much surprised when a combined majority of Southerners and Republicans on the Rules Committee last fortnight refused to give the bill a rule for debate in the House; or when Aunt Mary again announced that she would try to have the committee discharged from consideration by means of a petition. What was surprising was the reception which the House gave her petition last week.

Collecting 218 names for her first petition took Mary Norton 17 days. Record for similar petitions was 100 names in a day. Last week, Mrs. Norton was so conscious of the difficulty of her task that she sent a wire to Indiana's Congresswoman Virginia E. Jenckes, asking her to make a special trip from home to sign her name. Mrs. Jenckes flew East but she arrived at the Capitol in time only to witness the celebration of an astounding victory.

At noon that day, when the blank petition was placed on the Speaker's desk, a swarm of Representatives was already beginning to crowd the well of the House. Jostling each other to get at the fountain pen which Aunt Mary handed to the impatient signers, the House members became so boisterous that the sergeant at arms was called on to exert his authority, marshaled them into a queue which gradually wound half way around the chamber. So many members were in so much of a hurry to put their names on the petition that Speaker Bankhead, after calling hopelessly for order, was forced to suspend regular business. Whenever a Southerner or a Republican joined the line, supporters of the bill cheered. Forty minutes after the session opened, Mrs. Norton had 140 names on her list. Ten minutes later it had grown to 173.

Majority Leader Sam Rayburn of Texas had vowed he would not sign the petition. His was the 203rd name on the list. Cried Mrs. Norton: "It's all over now!" Eight Louisiana Democrats followed Mr. Rayburn. Oregon's Nan Honeyman was the 217th, leaving the honor of completing the list to Louisiana's Robert Mouton. Then Mr. Mouton stepped over to Mrs. Norton, gallantly kissed her hand.

Disappointed that it was too late for her signature to be added to the list, Mrs. Jenckes took the next plane for Indiana. Meanwhile, in a seething, shouting mob of Congressmen, Aunt Mary Norton accepted congratulations on setting a new House record (2 hr. 22 min.) for committee discharge petitions and on the No. 1 achievement of her political career.

Mrs. Norton got her nickname because she is called Aunt Mary by her niece, Marion McDonagh, who works under her as the Labor Committee's clerk. Last week Aunt Mary's big afternoon happened also to be Niece Marion's 28th birthday. Said she: "I just can't do any more work today." Although Mary Norton was equally elated she was nevertheless very much aware that her chef-d'oeuvre in Congress, the Wages-&-Hours Bill, was still far from enactment. Even if the House passes it, which it may well do this month, the Bill faces a battle in the Senate, hard sledding in conference and an-other vote in both Houses before it becomes law.

Inasmuch as she is considered a friend to U. S. Labor, Aunt Mary Norton's political origins are incongruous. She is a protegee of Labor's No. i bete noire, Jersey City's Boss Frank Hague, who while Aunt Mary was winning her parliamentary battle last week was preparing for a very different battle of his own, v. Representatives O'Connell and Bernard. * That Mary Norton is a political ally of Boss Hague by no means argues a lack of sincerity in her efforts on behalf of labor legislation. On the other hand, neither her sincerity nor her afternoon of triumph last week indicates that Aunt Mary, who as chairman of the House District Committee was a great success as "the first woman Mayor of Washington," has been an equally outstanding success as Labor chairman. Undoubtedly, her efforts and those of her steering committee, headed by Massachusetts' Arthur Healey, last week helped get Wages-&-Hours its hearing on the floor, but the real reasons for the sensational transformation of Aunt Mary's capsized applecart into a genuine political bandwagon lay elsewhere. They were: 1) a letter to her from Franklin Roosevelt last fortnight in effect urging members to heed her petition, and 2) the Florida primary (see p. 77), which had the result of urging members to heed Franklin Roosevelt.

* Mayor Hague won by the simple expedient of jampacking Jersey City's Journal Square, where Messrs. O'Connell and Bernard were scheduled to lambaste Hagueism, with loyal Hague followers. This convinced the crusaders they had best stay away.

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