"Charley Mac"

By historic coincidence, the Republican Senate leadership fell open the same week as the Democratic. Death came to Charles Linza McNary, 69, the slender, urbane Oregonian who adroitly steered his Party's Senate minority through the grueling first eleven years of the New Deal.

In-"Charley Mac," Republicans had a tactician who knew when to hold his pack, in order to let the Democrats knock each other out. The Democrats usually obliged, after the 1937 Supreme Court crisis. Others could make windmill orations or pass pious resolutions. Charley, imperturbable in his inevitable polka-dotted bow tie, held off cynically, did the real work in the Senate cloakroom. As Republican power grew, some wanted the Party to wage more courageous fight, but he was boss.

All Senators, and all who knew him, liked and respected him. Franklin Roosevelt did, and trusted Good Friend Charley implicitly. McNary was a public power enthusiast. He was a farm booster, with a name known to millions of farmers through his McNary-Haugen Act, forerunner of all farm subsidies. Not a man of international vision, but possessor of conscience and integrity, he veered back & forth on intervention before Pearl Harbor. These attitudes told as much of his origin as his thinking. He was born and all his life lived in Salem, Ore. (pop. 30,900), the town whence his grandfather had led the biggest caravan of covered wagons ever to cross the Oregon Trail. On his 300-acre farm, "Fir Cone," McNary's house was shaded by Douglas firs 175 feet tall. An expert orchardist, he grew prize filberts, and developed the famous Imperial, biggest of prunes. Oregon sent him to the Senate first in World War I. Oregon still was returning him proudly a quarter-century later, in World War II. Last November, he had a brain operation. After that, he lived on the Florida seashore at Fort Lauderdale, cheerfully awaiting the end.

Successors. McNary's passing left two jobs to be filled: his Oregon seat, and most important, his minority leadership. In Oregon, -the Portland Oregonian's Palmer Hoyt was considered a strong choice. But Governor Earl Snell may pick an interim Senator so that he can run for the seat himself in November.

Whoever succeeds McNary in the minority leadership, Republican tactics henceforth will be different. No one on the scene can rival Charley's cloakroom finesse; his likeliest successors are men more apt to give open battle on the floor. Three men are in line. One is Acting Leader Wallace White of Maine, who will get the job if the law of inertia applies. Another is Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg, first in line by seniority and prestige, who may refuse it in order to keep his individual freedom. Third choice, favored by the Party's Young Turks, is Ohio's contentious, conscientious Robert A. Taft, the man reputedly with the most brains.

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