New Faces

The new Congress will be shy a few of its predecessor's most flamboyant citizens (Ham Fish, "Cotton Ed" Smith, Gerald Nye, etc.). But it will have its own intriguing collection of new faces. Among them:

Cowboy. Idaho's next Senator is Glenn Hearst Taylor, 40, who won in his third try for office. The first time (1940), Cowboy Glenn toured the state with a blaring sound truck, lost. Second time (1942), he crooned and strummed his way around on a big black horse named "Nig," lost again. This year, after working in a San Francisco war plant, he turned up in Idaho in a sedate grey Homburg and a conservative business suit. That was it.

And the Ladies. Three new freshmen coeds, all Democrats, will join the six women already in the House. Prettiest newcomer is Hollywood's Helen Gahagan Douglas, 43, wife of Screen Actor Melvyn Douglas, now an Army major shepherding entertainers in the China-Burma-India theater. Miss Gahagan is a former Broadway star (Tonight or Never), mother of two, a passionate New Dealer. Another new Douglas (no relation) in the House is Emily Taft Douglas, daughter of the late Sculptor Lorado Taft, distant cousin of William Howard Taft. Her husband, a University of Chicago economics professor on military leave, was defeated for the Senate in 1942, is now a Marine captain serving in the South Pacific. Third new Congresswoman is Connecticut's grey, matronly Mrs. Chase Going Woodhouse, political economy professor in a Connecticut college, who won a surprise victory in a normally Republican district.

Sweeper. In Minneapolis, the discovery of a 10,000-vote tabulation error put snaggle-toothed William J. Gallagher, 69, a retired street sweeper, and Henry George, single-taxer, into the House. By sweeping out Richard Pillsbury Gale, 44, a sense-making Republican internationalist, Gallagher will trade a $25.48 a month city pension for a $10,000-a-year job.

Upset. Perhaps the Senate's biggest upset was the defeat of Pennsylvania's gladhanding, snow-crested "Puddler Jim" Davis, 71, member of the Moose, Secretary of Labor under Herbert Hoover and a fixture on the public payroll since 1921. His successor, who rode the Roosevelt wind across Pennsylvania, is an all but unknown Philadelphia Democrat, 200-lb. Francis J. Myers, 42, who has served three plodding terms in the House.

Left-Winger. New Representative from Washington State's First District is young Hugh De Lacy, 34, ex-college instructor and left-winger, who once called the draft a "fascist-like measure." Now a shipyard worker, De Lacy methodically changed clothes after work each day to campaign, because, he said, dungarees and tin hat "limit your appeal."

Tripartite. In Milwaukee's normally Republican, heavily German Fifth District, isolationist ex-Congressman Lewis Thill was trounced by six-foot, ruddy Andrew Biemiller, 38, a man of three parties. Biemiller was first a campaign manager for Socialist Norman Thomas in 1932; then a Progressive floor leader in Wisconsin in 1541; a Democratic jobholder ($4,600 a year in WPB) until he ran for Congress.

Comeback. Among all these new faces will be an old face painfully familiar to Democrats. He is Pennsylvania's lean, bald Robert Fleming Rich, 61, who owns a textile town, and looks like a cartoonist's Prohibitionist without the plug hat. Mr. Rich, who has been out of office for two years, used to jump to the House floor after the prayer, wave the daily Treasury statement overhead and shout: "Where are we going to get the money?" Democrats, would jeer and stamp until Rich yelled: "You wait till you get home." Not in Position. The only new Senator not already on record as an internationalist is hog-jowled, juke-box-manufacturing Homer Capehart of Indiana, 47, the phonograph tycoon, who got elected in Republican Indiana by simply being anti-Roosevelt. Last week the Washington Post asked him to tell where he stood on matters international. Replied Senator-Elect Capehart: "In the absence of any specific plans or concrete facts at the moment, I am not in a position to state just how far we should go as a nation at this time."

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