Fifteen Under Pressure

Under circumstances that were normal over the last decade, the Eisenhower Administration's bill to extend and liberalize foreign trade would have had clear sailing in the U.S. Senate's Finance Committee. A clear majority of the committee has long favored freer trade. But this year, with businessmen in a swivet over revived competition from Europe and Japan (a West Virginian moaned that Japan will destroy the U.S. marblemaking industry), the pressures on the 15 committee members have been tremendous.

"I'm for It, But . . ." For many years Finance Committee Chairman Harry Byrd has been as staunch a friend as reciprocal trade has had. Now, after hearing from

Virginia's expanding textile industry, Democrat Byrd says he may support some amendments. Utah Republican Wallace Bennett is worried about his State's lead and zinc industries; Oklahoma Democrat Robert Kerr, Texas Democrat Lyndon Johnson and Kansas Republican Frank Carlson are looking over their shoulders at the oilmen back home.

Florida Democrat George Smathers says he is for the bill, but "I can think of a couple of little amendments I might propose." Delaware Democrat J. Allen Frear and Republicans Eugene Millikin of Colorado, Edward Martin of Pennsylvania and Ralph Flanders of Vermont are, at best, lukewarm toward the bill and at worst, bitterly opposed. Louisiana Democrat Russell Long is "almost ioo%" for the bill, but Nevada Republican George Malone is 100% against it. Other views:

P:Georgia Democrat Walter George has been a low-tariff man since the null He still is--with some reservations. He will, he says, support the Eisenhower measure, but he adds: "It may be that I will vote for sortie clarifying amendments." What is George worried about? Says he quietly: "My textile people are very much disturbed."

P:Kentucky's Alben W. Barkley says of the bill: "I'm for it--but I'm disturbed about coal and fluorspar so I'm reserving my judgment on amendments.

P: Delaware Republican John Williams says: "I'm just as neutral as can be."

"It Would Be Fatal." Last week the one man who can save the foreign-trade bill in anything approaching adequate form began his fight. Said Dwight Eisenhower, at the Washington conference of the Advertising Council: "It would be fatal, in my opinion, to allow the accumulated minor objections of each district, or of each industry, because of real or fancied damage, to defent us in this great purpose of a legitimate economic union of the free world opposing Communism. Now this is what I am honestly convinced of: unless we make it possible, through enlightened methods, for the free world to trade more freely, we are not going to win the ideological battle."

The President can be expected to step up his campaign in the coming days, but he is by no means assured of winning out. Mourned old Alben Barkley: "It's like Solomon trying to decide whom the baby belongs to. and we're not all Solomons."

The U.S. does not expect (or want) its Senators to be Solomons, and the problem posed by the foreign-trade bill demands not legendary wisdom but simple legislative responsibility. Before the Finance Committee hearings were well under way, more than 100 amendments had been introduced, nearly all of them tossing a tariff sop to localized industries with little regard for the common good.

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