Mr. Wheeler's Five Hours

Montana's Senator Burton K. Wheeler, great white hope of those who hate the prospect of fighting for their freedom, made another last stand. His colleagues slipped quietly out of the chamber. But the galleries were full of approving women and children.

Burt Wheeler wanted to keep pre-Pearl Harbor fathers out of the draft, at least until next year. To the nearly empty floor he cried:

"I have said that no father in the United States should be called . . . until the slackers are taken out of the Government bureaus. Fathers should not be called until the slackers are taken out of the industries where they are hiding today."

Senator Wheeler went off on a new tack: "There are in this country today over 3,000,000 men in the 4F classification. . . . I have seen instance after instance of men who have been rejected subsequently going to work on the railroads or in factories, and demonstrating that they are just as strong as men in the services. . . ."

Will the Senator Yield? This was the signal for Administration stalwarts. Majority Leader Alben Barkley inquired innocently: "How does the Senator know that of his own knowledge?"

Wheeler: "Because I have seen it with my own eyes."

Barkley: "The Senator did not see the men examined, I presume?"

Wheeler: "No, but I have seen the men who came back."

Barkley: "Did the Senator see them working on railroad tracks?"

Wheeler: "It is not a question of my seeing each and every one of them, because I do not imagine the Senator from Kentucky is able to see all the people of Kentucky."

Barkley: "No, and I am not going to imagine the condition of all the people of Kentucky whom I cannot see."

Senator Wheeler carried on, bloody but unbowed. "One of the greatest hoarders of manpower is the War Department itself. A stenographer from my State, employed in the War Department, came to see me. She said she had been in the War Department for six months and had not had to do a day's work while she had been there."

In jumped Democratic Whip Lister Hill: "I think the Senate is entitled to information--"

Wheeler (petulantly): ". . . I am trying to make a speech."

Barkley: "The Senator from Montana does not contend that the girl who spoke to him, or any other girl in the War Department, ought to be taken out of the Department and placed in the Army?"

Wheeler (at the end of his rope): "No."

Will the Senator Pipe Down? Thus, for five hours, Senator Wheeler spoke to empty seats and took his heckling. Though his evidence was hearsay, he had made three points: 1) many a Government bureau is overstaffed, 2) many a war plant, particularly those with cost-plus contracts, has used occupational deferments to hoard unnecessary workers, 3) if U.S. manpower were used more efficiently, fewer fathers would be drafted. But Senator Wheeler had changed no one's mind about his bill to defer fathers. At the unanimous urging of Army, Navy, Selective Service and Manpower Commission, Congress will do nothing to stop the drafting of fathers, which began officially last week. By year's end the armed services, which already have more than a million fathers who think the whole current debate is academic, will take 446,000 more through draft boards.

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