Today: "The Poll Tax Peril"

The U.S. Senate staged a stately little theatrical as rigid and rehearsed as a minuet. Designed to impress 1944 voters, the production played five matinees to half-filled galleries.

Solemnly stepping through their paces, the Senators first received the House-passed Marcantonio bill, which would outlaw the poll tax in eight Southern states. On cue, bombastic old Tom Connally rose up to shake his grey-white mane and speak his piece about States' rights. "Because my own State of Texas does not conduct its affairs as the State of New York thinks it should conduct them," he declaimed, "these crusaders, these Sir Galahads, mount their steeds and come down into Texas to modify us, and to Christianize us, and to liberalize us, and to modernize us and to intelligence-ize us."

Senator Connally was cast in the role of a filibustering Southerner who feared that the Senate might actually invoke cloture/- and bring the distasteful Marcantonio bill to a vote. He played it straight, without a single giveaway. In his most sonorous tones he pleaded: "Ah ... do not choke us, do not throw around us the cloak of silence. ... We beg of you not to throttle us, not to throttle the truth, not to throttle the right. . . ."

Backstage. In spite of professional performances by Tom Connally and his supporting company--which included such seasoned troupers as Mississippi's Bilbo, Alabama's Bankhead and Tennessee's McKellar (see cut)--none but the most gullible galleryite was taken in. Everybody else knew that a cynical Senate had quietly made an election-year deal, arranged everything backstage in advance. There would be 1) no filibuster, 2) no cloture, 3) no Marcantonio bill.

By the terms of the deal, Southerners would be allowed to protest at length and get themselves on record as favoring the poll tax and "white supremacy." Republicans and Northern Democrats, prodded by church, liberal, labor and Negro organizations, would pass around a petition to impose cloture and force a vote. When cloture failed--as it did this week by a vote of 4440-36--the bill would be quietly shelved, at least until after Nov. 7.

Only a minority of Senators want to keep the poll tax. But the Senate steadfastly declines, except on rarest occasions, to gag a single one of its members. This has been a characteristic of gentlemen's debating societies ever since the Roman Senate, bored with the obstructionist tactics of Cato the Younger, nonetheless allowed him to filibuster on. Last week Tom Connally explained this ancient paradox in down-to-earth terms: "Those who today may advocate the imposition of cloture . . . may tomorrow be the victims of it. ... It has been suggested that Dr. Guillotine, who invented the guillotine, was himself guillotined by the guillotine."

/-The cloture rule is a device by which two-thirds of the Senate can end debate and force an immediate vote. It was adopted in 1917, after the filibuster against arming merchant ships prompted Woodrow Wilson to denounce "a little group of willful men." It has been invoked only four times.

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