Delayed Hatch

"It shall be unlawful for any person employed in any administrative or supervisory capacity by any agency of the Federal Government, whose compensation, or any part thereof, is paid from funds authorized or appropriated by any Act of Congress, to use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with an election or of affecting the results thereof."

So reads the dynamite clause of "An Act to prevent pernicious political activities" drafted by New Mexico's Kansas-born, judicially-minded Democratic Senator Carl Atwood Hatch. He has been hammering at political-appointees-in-politics ever since 1932. In 1935, he joined Oregon's late Republican Senator Steiwer in proposing such an act to disinfect the next year's national election, but the Senate beat them down. He tried again in 1938, but Kentucky's Alben Barkley, in mortal danger of defeat for renomination by Governor "Happy" Chandler's State-employe machine, staved the bill off by an impassioned plea. But the Senate passed his bill unanimously two months ago.

"Cactus Jack" Garner sped the Hatch Bill on its way by assuring newsmen it would become law before the Congress rises this summer. But his hard-bitten old friend, Chairman Hatton Sumners of the House Judiciary Committee (where the bill went) was sick. Half-incubated, not even warm, the bill lay neglected until a subcommittee, headed by Massachusetts' iron-grey Arthur Healey, reported it favorably to the full committee, amended only to except from its prohibitions the President, Vice President, Cabinet and assistants (one each), Congress (and staffs).

Telephones on Capitol Hill then began to jangle. At the business end of the phones was watchful old Charles Michelson, $25,000-a-year mouthpiece of the Democratic National Committee. Senator Hatch had talked about his bill with Franklin Roosevelt, understood him to be in favor. But Representative Healey and New York's Emanuel Celler (in Hatton Sumner's absence, acting chairman of the full Judiciary Committee) visited the White House and came away saying that the bill, as written, was fine in principle but "too broad." They would "strengthen" it, remove its "monstrosities and absurdities." At his press conference Mr. Roosevelt said it was "badly drawn" (which was remarkable, since Carl Hatch's language echoed almost word for word Rule No. 1 of the Civil Service code). Carl Hatch feared that Mr. Roosevelt's men had orders to rewrite his act so as to immunize the very hyenas he had been trying to exterminate from politics: U. S. district attorneys, independent agency officials (WPA, FCC, FTC, and the like), internal revenue and customs collectors, etc. etc.*

* Postmasters, arch political agents since Andrew Jackson's day, were "removed" from politics by covering them into the Civil Service last year.

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