THE SENATE'S MOST EXPENDABLE

In the Senate Restaurant, and along the tiled Senate corridors, Senators are known not only by the headlines they make but also by the company they keep; by their native ability and practical effectiveness as legislators; by the work they do, or avoid. A favorite pastime is picking the worst of the lot.

It involves standards of comparison. It is easy to sigh for the days of Senators with tongues of silver and minds of steel, to forget that some of today's Senators rank high in character and vision, that few of the present Senators are as bad as some specimens of recent history--the Bilbos, Huey Longs, "Pappy" O'Daniels and "Cotton Ed" Smiths. Some are merely time servers and seat warmers who are as incapable of harm as of greatness. There are others whose antics are sometimes cheap and whose motivations are sometimes sordid. But their faults in one area of lawmaking or politicking are offset by their usefulness in others. After allowances are made for such human frailty, these eight would turn up on most lists of the Senate's most expendable men:

Kenneth D. McKellar, Democrat from Tennessee, 81, relentless in his prejudices, vicious in his vendettas. Under the congressional rules which promote men by seniority instead of ability, Spoilsman McKellar wields immense power. As chairman of the Senate's money-spending machinery, he browbeats and bullies Senators who need his approval for their pet projects. He badgered David Lilienthal because Lilienthal refused to load TVA with McKellar patronage, yelped that ECAdministrator Paul Hoffman ought to resign for the good of the country. A Senator longer than any of his colleagues (33 years), Kenneth McKellar, hell-raiser in committee and on the floor, has long been the meek and humble stooge of Tennessee's E. H. ("Boss") Crump.

Patrick A. (Pat) McCarran, Democrat from Nevada, 73, pompous, vindictive and power-grabbing--a sort of McKellar with shoes on. Working hand in glove with McKellar, he tied the 81st Congress' appropriations machinery in knots, staged a one-man committee filibuster against a liberalized bill to admit D.P.s to the U.S., and almost succeeded --with McKellar--in mutilating the Marshall Plan last summer. To control or retaliate against Senators who stand up against him, the silver-haired spokesman of the silver bloc swings a big club: chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, which passes on all claims against the Government and judiciary patronage.

Harry Pulliam Cain, Republican from Washington, 44, tall, lean, friendly--and a lightweight. As early as 1947, he urged withdrawal of occupation forces from Germany, and an end to the denazification program. On occasion, he subjects the Senate to hammy theatrics and wild filibusters. Some of his Senate colleagues would be inclined to rate him as no more than a noisy nonentity if he were not something more bothersome--the real-estate lobby's warmest friend.

William E. Jenner, Republican from Indiana, who is devoid of influence among his colleagues and partisan-minded to the last brain cell. He recently implied that the H-bomb was part of a Democratic plot to wipe out civilization. Jenner's political vision is too myopic to win him classification even as a nationalist--he seems to think that the world consists only of the state of Indiana and that small patch of Chicago which holds up Colonel Bertie McCormick's Tribune Tower. So intense were Jenner's isolationist views when he returned from a worldwide senatorial junket last year (with a senatorial subcommittee of which he was not even a member) that a Washington correspondent began his story: "Senator Jenner returned to Washington today and gave the whole world 24 hours to get out."

Waspish, 41-year-old Bill Jenner is a small man to use the Senate office chambers once occupied by the late great George W. Norris.

Glen H. Taylor, 45, Democrat from Idaho, the banjo-twanging playboy of the Senate. An easy mark for far-left propaganda, he ran as Henry Wallace's vice presidential candidate on the 1948 Progressive Party ticket, has since tried to be a good boy to get Democratic help in his re-election campaign. His major achievement while in office: a "crosscountry peace crusade" on horseback which covered only 275 miles by horse and the rest by car.

William Longer, Republican from North Dakota, who was almost barred from his Senate seat in 1941 on grounds of "moral turpitude" growing out of some old charges of corruption while he was governor of North Dakota. He has since made several Senators regret their votes to seat him. A lone wolf, incapable of cooperation, 63-year-old Isolationist Langer has probably introduced more trivial bills than any other Senator, once proposed that the U.S. withhold the $3,750,000,000 loan from Britain and use the money to provide urinalysis for U.S. citizens.

George W. Malone, isolationist Republican from Nevada, a onetime prizefighter who fights a loud, long fight for narrow sectional interests. His Senate office is a rat's nest of statistics on the West's mineral resources and little else; his chair on the Senate floor is often vacant. Fifty-nine-year-old "Molly" Malone once represented the Western mining and industrial interests in the Capitol lobby; as a Senator, he still does.

Elmer Thomas, Democrat from Oklahoma, 73, who votes pro-labor often enough to win labor's support at elections, but owes much of his backing to oil and private utilities. Two years ago he was exposed for trading in the cotton commodities market--through his wife --during his chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture Committee. Thomas made himself look silly and embarrassed his country on a tour of western Europe last year by complaining loudly that the Swedish government had not entertained him richly enough.

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