Curtains for Cotton Ed

Cotton Ed Smith, galumphing off to the Senate chamber, liked to say that he was "going over to the Cave of the Winds." During his 35 years in the Senate, he himself could summon up as hot a sirocco as any that scorched the Ship of State. A fit of temper would get him on his feet, and if he could not get the Speaker's attention, he would hack petulantly away on the arm of his chair with a penknife. The old man (80) has a somewhat high-pitched voice, corkscrewing oddly out of his mastiff jowls; his stature is small and his build square. But his bulldog face, his straight-backed bearing, his scraggly walrus mustache, and his command of epithet have given him a compelling ferocity.

Such oratorical omelets, composed of Southern corn, overblown poetical allusions, rough waggery and incoherent rambling have seldom been presented in the halls of Congress since the days when John Randolph of Roanoke used to stride into the House, whip in hand, followed by a Negro boy with a flagon of porter, to administer a tongue-lashing to Henry Clay.

But Ellison DuRant Smith (his opponents pronounce his middle name in two words) is no Southern aristocrat. He was born during the Civil War, near Lynchburg, S.C., and raised in the Reconstruction, when carpetbaggers, scalawags and Negroes bankrupted the State Legislature. He never tried to overcome his horror at the thought of a Negro voting. He had two ideas: 1) keep Negroes down, 2) the price of cotton up. On this platform Cotton Ed was kept in office as a U.S. Senator for six terms, long enough to become the dean of the Senate. This week he also became the man with the longest continuous Senatorial record in U.S. history.* But Cotton Ed was in no mood to celebrate: he had been beaten for a seventh term in last week's South Carolina primary.

Jackass Age. Cotton Ed was a conscientious objector to the 20th Century. He walked out of the 1936 Democratic Convention in high dudgeon because a Negro preacher read a prayer. He was a drag-end isolationist. He was a believer in poll taxes; he was never heard to protest a Southern lynching; and he stood prepared to filibuster to the end against an anti-lynching bill. He decorated his speeches by "pings" at a spittoon ten feet away, or if there were no spittoons, he would spit on the Senate carpet.

In his 35 years on the U.S. payroll he kept the list loaded with members of his family. He was imperious: "Tell those butt-heads we will assemble tomorrow morning" was his way of summoning fellow Senators to a meeting of his Agriculture Committee. He once formulated his economic, social and political thinking in one sentence: "Gentlemen, we are right in the smack-dab middle of a jackass age."

Six years ago Franklin Roosevelt tried to "purge" him from the Senate. This classic political mistake got Cotton Ed re-elected just as the people of South Carolina were prepared to throw him out. For Cotton Ed exploited the "carpetbag meddling" for all it was worth. Said he, with gallus-snapping righteousness: "You can buy a rubber stamp for a dollar, but you can't buy a man for any price. God made me a man before South Carolina made me a Senator." After that, Cotton Ed's hatred for the President extended to everything that Franklin Roosevelt did.

A Look at the Pigs. Cotton Ed's opponent in the 1938 purge attempt was Governor Olin D. Johnston, who campaigned on the slogan: "A vote for Olin D. is a vote for the principles of Franklin D." Last week Johnston opposed Cotton Ed again. By now Olin Johnston, though a supporter of Roosevelt's foreign policy, was only lukewarm to the New Deal. This time he snatched the bloody flag of "white supremacy" from Cotton Ed and raced down the field with it.

In joint speaking bees with Cotton Ed up & down the state (as required by South Carolina custom) Governor Johnston boasted of how he had changed the state's laws to keep Negroes from voting. Said he: "Had it not been for my action, tomorrow you would be walking along with Negroes to the ballot box. I am not . . . in favor of social or political equality of the white and black races. I believe in action, and not mere words." Bull-necked Governor Johnston, 47, is a tough, chunky six-footer, a "linthead" (he worked in cotton mills as a boy), and was a front-line sergeant in World War I. Beside him, Cotton Ed seemed aged and tired. In one appearance, Cotton Ed spoke a few minutes, then played a recording of a speech he made six years ago. The audience was shocked: his voice now was a whisper.

Cotton Ed heard the news of his defeat while slumped in a chair at his 2,500-acre farm near Lynchburg. He chomped his jowls for a moment, then rose and said matter-of-factly: "Well, I guess I'd better go out and look at the pigs."

* On August 4 he overtook Senator William B. Allison of Iowa, who served 35 years, from 1873 to 1908.

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