The New Model

Homer Earl Capehart, the onetime phonograph maker from Indianapolis, was for years a target for the bitter sneers of liberals and laborites from both major parties. Last week the old critics were cheering Homer Capehart while ranged against him were such old-time friends as the National Association of Manufacturers and Robert Alphonso Taft. The issue, that brought about this strange shift of forces: Republican Senator Capehart's bill to provide standby controls on prices, wages and rents.

The Bulldozer. Indiana's Capehart had been a symbol for decontrol for nearly two years. His Capehart amendment (permitting price hikes to cover all cost increases from the beginning of the Korean war to July 26, 1951) shot price ceilings full of holes and aroused the wrath of the Truman Administration. Harry Truman said it was "like a bulldozer, crashing aimlessly through existing price formulas, leaving havoc in its wake." Little wonder, then, that Capitol Hill was startled this year when Bulldozer Capehart proposed that Congress give the President power to freeze wages, prices and rents for 90 days in case of a "grave national emergency."

Fascinated Democrats and dismayed conservative Republicans watched agape as Capehart judiciously steered the bill through the Senate's Banking & Currency Committee, of which he is chairman. Actually, his position was not inconsistent. The day after the Korean war began in 1950 he had proposed an immediate price-wage-rent freeze. His proposal was snubbed; controls were not imposed for seven months. In those seven months the wholesale price index rose by 15%, the consumer's index by 6 2/3%. These increases, Capehart argued, left no foundation for sound controls. He fought Truman's belated program every step of the way.

This year, pushing his bill along, Capehart has repeatedly pointed out that if there is a new, great emergency he wants prices frozen immediately to prevent a repetition of the 1950 inflation.

When Capehart's committee completed its work on the bill, Illinois' Democratic Senator Paul Douglas, an old Capehart antagonist, proposed that the committee vote its thanks for the chairman's fine work. Said Douglas, with admiration in his voice:"You could not serve under a better chairman. He's fairminded, decent, generous." The Salesman. On the Senate floor last week, one of Capehart's dismayed old friends, Utah's Republican Senator Wallace Foster Bennet, an ex-president of the N.A.M., argued that the U.S. should never again have economic controls except as "the last recourse." Bob Taft opposed Capehart on another principle. Said he: "All the time I have been in Congress I have opposed giving the President the power to declare emergencies, and I am just as much opposed now to giving that power to the present President as I was when Mr. Truman and other Democratic leaders were in control." Looking around at his new friends and foes. Homer Capehart thought it was time to redefine his position. "I am a free enterpriser," he said. "I am so independent as a businessman, and individually, that I do not even like to sleep in a little room; I like to sleep in a big room. I do not want to be hemmed in from any direction . . .

But in this instance we Republicans have a responsibility. We have a Republican President, and we control both houses of Congress. If during our tenure of office a grave emergency strikes, we, and we alone, will have to deal with it."Political responsibility has changed Capehart in many ways. In his new role as a committee chairman and top-ranking member of the Senate majority, he works harder (twelve to 15 hours a day; 3,000 letters a week), but he is more relaxed and his desk is neater--it is arranged in well-defined piles, not in the huge, disorderly mounds of the opposition days. Said Capehart last week: "I'm by nature an optimist; I like to do constructive things, to produce things . . . I'd much prefer to sell something than be against."

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