Scalping

Nevada's grizzled, barrel-shaped Senator Pat McCarran went on the warpath last week for the umptieth time in his ten-year career of hatcheting the New Deal. (As far back as 1934 the maverick Pat used to hunt with Huey Long on the President's trail.) This time Pat McCarran was after the bald scalp of birdlike Attorney General Francis Biddle.

Last February the hefty Nevadan armed himself for the next foray with a huge tomahawk: a Senate Resolution empowering him to investigate any of the 3,374 presidential executive orders issued since March 4, 1933. With this power tucked in his belt, Pat McCarran sat quietly in the wigwam of his Senate Judiciary Committee, biding his time.

On the day that Franklin Roosevelt, on the legal advice of Francis Biddle, seized Montgomery Ward's Chicago plant, Pat McCarran pulled on his war bonnet. He sent a committee agent to Chicago, subpoenaed WLB files, and jumped into the headlines with a promise of a fearless, "nonpolitical" investigation. For three weeks he and West Virginia's G.O.P. Senator Chapman Revercomb mulled over their evidence. Last week they reported:

P:Francis Biddle's letter backing up the President's seizure contained "erroneous, misleading, irrelevant and immaterial statements . . . which have tended to confuse rather than clarify the facts."

P:The Attorney General reached an "unwarranted and untenable" conclusion when he said that the Montgomery Ward dispute could not be settled except by presidential intervention.

P:The Attorney General was "misadvised" when he said the President had authority for the seizure under the Smith-Connally anti-strike act.

P:The Attorney General was gravely "in error" when he invested the President with "an aggregate of powers," derived from the Constitution, under which he could do almost anything.

P:The Attorney General recited facts "which are unconfirmed by the record," while other and seemingly pertinent points "apparently escaped his attention."

For good measure, Senators McCarran and Revercomb also attacked the actions of WLB, NLRB, Frances Perkins' Conciliation Service, and even old Commerce Secretary Jesse Jones, who has been lying low for months. All, in the view of the two Senators, had exceeded their authority.

"Unswayed." Francis Biddle called the report "absurd." Then, after several hours' thought, he issued a statement attacking Pat McCarran's unwillingness to hear any witnesses.

To the Attorney General's request to testify, Pat McCarran haughtily replied: the committee wished to reach its conclusions on the facts--"unswayed by emotional arguments."

Presumably Francis Biddle, who testified for six hours last week before a House investigating committee, will be heard again when the full Senate Judiciary Committee takes up the McCarran report. But before then the whole Montgomery Ward issue may flare anew. This week, before the WLB, the company must show cause why it should not restore the old union contract (containing maintenance of union membership). If the company refuses, as Sewell Avery has said it will, the only Administration recourse would seem to be to seize the plant all over again.

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