Victory for Whom?

Henry Wallace, battling for a place in the Fourth Term sun, began his week with a speech in Manhattan. He was flanked by Henry Kaiser and Eleanor Roosevelt; his ears were ringing with a felicitous endorsement from Franklin Roosevelt: ". . . a clear voice to the conscience and the hopes of men everywhere."

To a nationwide radio audience, Wallace lashed out at his opponents: "They are not fighting a starry-eyed liberal or mystic. If they really thought that, they wouldn't be worried. They are fighting against sound principles upon which America can survive. . . . They are fighting against the survival of capitalism. . . . They are fighting you, and millions like you to the third and fourth generations."

Then Henry Wallace, who has become the most determined political orator in the country, added: "Those who fight this issue must be defeated in 1946."

The speech, short as it was, bristled defiance. And it had its effect. Said Virginia's Harry Byrd, the intellectual leader of the Wallace opposition: "He threatened to carry the issue to the people unless the Senate confirms his appointment [as Commerce Secretary and Federal Loan Administrator] intact. This challenge I hope the Senate will accept without equivocation or compromise."

The people had no chance for a direct vote on the issue. By & large, the press was heavily anti-Wallace; the 150,000 letters and telegrams that flooded Washington (largely from C.I.O.-P.A.C. sources) were heavily pro-Wallace. But it was the elected representatives of the people, in the U.S. Senate, who forced a settlement --after two days of extraordinary backstage dickering.

The First Day. First off, Henry Wallace was left with almost no high-placed Administration bigwig to fight for him publicly. His on-the-scene supporters were all in the New Deal wing in the Senate, headed by Florida's Pepper and Montana's Murray. But they are not strategists. Thus it fell to Majority Leader Alben Barkley, abed in Naval Hospital with an ulcerated eye, to get up and lead the Wallace fight. First thing Barkley did was to demand a pro-Wallace statement from the White House. It was not immediately forthcoming.

The Wallacemen now realized that they could never get Henry confirmed as a full successor to Jesse Jones, i.e., both as Commerce Secretary and as dispenser of RFC's billions. They adopted a new tack: first pass Senator George's "bill of divorcement" dividing the two jobs, then get Henry in as Commerce Secretary only. This halfway admission of defeat merely strengthened the determination of anti-Wallacemen to reject him immediately and completely, for both jobs.

The Second Day. To Arthur Krock, the New York Times's Washington pundit, the day before the showdown was "the night before somebody's Waterloo." And it was clear between the lines that Arthur Krock thought, and hoped, that the Waterloo would be Henry Wallace's. There was some reason for his belief. Anti-Wallacemen, like North Carolina's upright Josiah Bailey, seemed in complete control. Senator Barkley and Vice President Truman went humbly to Joe Bailey, pleaded with him for an hour to relent. "Holy Joe" Bailey would not.

Then National Democratic Chairman Bob Hannegan, perhaps trying to regain favor with Eleanor Roosevelt and other potent New Dealers, took a hand. He telephoned dozens of Senators in Wallace's behalf, finally reported that Wallace "doesn't have a ghost of a chance."

The Showdown. On the morning of the showdown, Alben Barkley, wearing a black patch over his bad eye, called a caucus of Democratic Senators. For well over an hour he begged them to let the George Bill come to a vote first, pass it, and then vote on Henry Wallace's qualifications. Finally, he pulled out his ace argument. At this very moment, said he, Franklin Roosevelt was "on the verge of" a historic international conference.* At such a time, he argued, the Senate must not slap down Mr. Roosevelt at home. Wyoming's dapper little Joseph O'Mahoney added his plea: "It is time for us to think what this is going to mean overseas."

But the anti-Wallacemen were deaf. In the hottest terms, Bailey denounced Wallace as the preceptor of wild economics, a "dangerous" man whom it would be "immoral" to confirm. The caucus broke up, with nothing but a bitter taste in everyone's mouth.

Five minutes later, in the Senate Chamber, the opposing forces were arrayed. The galleries were packed, with hundreds of standees. Bailey, belatedly gathering more ammunition, thumbed through one of Henry Wallace's books, Whose Constitution?

Wheel-Chair Vote. Prayer and preliminaries over, Bailey moved that the Senate go into executive session to vote on the confirmation of Henry Wallace. Such a motion is not debatable. If passed, it meant that the Senate would certainly turn Henry Wallace down. This was the showdown. Did the anti-Wallacemen have the votes? To gather them all, they had persuaded Nevada's pale, ailing James Scrugham, 65, to leave Naval Hospital, had brought him to the chamber in a wheel chair.

The roll call began. The galleries were mouse-quiet. As the vote seesawed back & forth, many a Senator kept his own tally. Six times the vote was tied. The final count: 43-to-41 against taking up the nomination now. (Actually, the final vote was a 42-to-42 tie, but Ohio's Bob Taft, though bitterly anti-Wallace, switched his in a vain effort to force a reconsideration.) The pro-Wallace vote was made up of ten Republicans, one Progressive and 32 Democrats. The men who had saved Wallace fell into three groups: 1) out & out New Dealers; 2) Senators who might have voted against him but feared C.I.O. retaliation at home; 3) Senators who, knowing the George Bill would pass, wanted to give Wallace a fair chance at the Commerce Secretaryship.

Promptly Alben Barkley moved to consider the George Bill and, after some cursory sparring, it passed, 74-to-12. Just as the vote was being taken, a page in knee-breeches tugged at Alben Barkley's coat. The Senator rushed to the cloakroom, returned in three minutes with a penciled slip of paper in his hand. Triumphantly he read it to the Senate. It was a paraphrased* message from the President, two days late, promising that he would sign the George Bill. Thereupon, Alben Barkley moved that the vote on confirming Henry Wallace as just plain Secretary of Commerce be delayed until March 1. Few doubted that at that time Henry Wallace will win the Senate's approval. Reasons: 1) the job has been stripped down; 2) most Senators grant a President the right to name his official family (e.g., even Harry Hopkins was confirmed as Commerce Secretary in 1939).

The battle over Wallace had been fought in such extreme black & white terms that it was possible for his journalistic detractors to picture him as fit for the loony bin, while his journalistic defenders called him the political hope of the common man (see cuts). In the end, the compromise was so adroit that both sides could, and did, claim a victory. The Wallace opponents had blocked his way into the biggest lending agency on earth. But Henry Wallace, who, at 56, is a rising politician, had won the hope of an effective sounding board within the Government. And, for a man who wants to be the economic Messiah of the 1940s, this was, perhaps, the principal prize.

* For other technical violations of security regulations, see PRESS.

* In State Department practice, coded cabled messages are paraphrased before public release, to prevent detection of the code.

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