Historic Session

The 77th U.S. Congress was ready this week to throw in the sponge. Its term had begun in the ominously peaceful days of January 1941, when an owlish, cactaceous man named John Nance Garner still presided over the Senate; any hope of ending its term in an aura of statesmanship had now faded.

For last week the greatest of all parliaments was in a hopeless muddle. Senators and Representatives, wearied by the terrible grind, their tempers frayed from working at cross-purposes, their distaste for Washington mounting, had gone home in droves. The House could not raise a quorum. The Senate witnessed the shoddy spectacle of two one-man filibusters. Early in the week Missouri's mulish Bennett Champ Clark tied up business for two days, finally forced the Mexican claims bill back into conference.

Then Nevada's silver-haired, rancorous Pat McCarran, spokesman for the silver bloc, opened a filibuster against an Administration bill to permit the sale of Government-owned silver for commercial use at less than the pegged price. One day Pat McCarran read drowsily for four hours from ancient RFC hearings. His voice began to crack; while the opposition was napping, Pat McCarran gained unanimous consent for a clerk to continue the reading. The clerk droned on, filling up 15 pages of the Congressional Record, at $55 a page.

There apparently were enough votes to pass the silver bill (which bore the endorsement of the Army, Treasury and WPB), so Pat McCarran stayed on his feet. If he ever sat down, Administration leaders hoped to call up a bill extending RFC's borrowing authority by $5 billion (to finance war-plant expansions). But squarely blocking such hopes was the threat of Oklahoma's Elmer Thomas, a leader of the farm bloc, to start all over again the battle over farm-parity prices.

One man could stop any action; there seemed to be nothing to do but go home.

Counterpoint. No U.S. Congress had ever been on such a spot as the 77th. It was hard to imagine in all the history of parliaments, a time when ordinary men had to grapple with issues of such magnitude; they surpassed the grasp of many a legislator from the creek bottoms. But in its own way--which is not the way of direct approach--Congress tackled them all.

No legislative body had ever been called upon to appropriate $141 billion for war ($222 billion since mid-1940). Congress did, the while it filibustered over the right of Southern States to charge a man $1 to vote. Congress voted a Navy big enough to rule the seven seas; before Pearl Harbor its isolationist horsemen almost rode into defeat the President's request to put cannon on merchant ships. Suspicious of U.S. allies, Congressmen haggled over Lend-Lease; yet last week they could see the magnificent results of that policy. (see p. 17).

Congress is a stubborn body, proud of its rights. Yet the 77th signed away many of its powers to the President. It watched him delegate the powers to administrators and bureaucrats, then fought with the bureaucrats. Its Democrats sniped at Franklin Roosevelt and he at Congress; they cursed him when he failed to help them at election time. Only a few of its members saw war at first hand (notably Minnesota's Melvin Maas, Texas' Lyndon Johnson); but all held a veto power over the progress of war.

Point. Historians may well marvel at the tasks thrust on the 77th Congress; in no other country were the overwhelming chores of global war thrown on such a heterogeneous group of men & women. Some future Reveille in Washington will record the solemn manner in which Franklin Roosevelt asked for a declaration of war, the triumphant grin on Poll-Taxer Theodore Bilbo's face, the specter of Prohibition unearthed by Josh Lee, the invective poured out by Montana's Burton Wheeler, the ringing periods of Visitor Winston Churchill's oration in the House Chamber, the turbulent, sweaty, exhausting, endless, day-by-day job of 531 men & women dealing with the nation's war. And historians will reach their own verdict on the accomplishment.

As the remaining legislators packed their bags to go home, those who would, return in January looked with hope to the start of a new session. The slate would be clean; there would be an infusion of new blood. With power almost evenly divided, neither Democrats nor Republicans would be able to pass the buck. The 78th Congress might be caught up in even more bitter brawls; it might establish a new pattern of responsibility. The U.S. people hoped for the best.

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