Loud & Low

Last week the House of Representatives defeated the bill for Hawaiian-Alaskan statehood after a loud-voiced, low-swinging debate. Loudest and lowest was New York's Republican Representative John Pillion, who discovered that anti-Communism can be used to justify almost any political action.

As he spoke from the well of the House, Pillion stood beside a huge bulletin board thumbtacked with clippings about Hawaii's Communists. Pointing at the clippings with an accusing finger, Pillion cried: "The last session of the Hawaiian legislature was a Communist holiday."

The statehood bill, said he, guarantees "Harry Bridges fwo seats in the Senate and two in the House . . . Statehood at this time would only serve to deliver the Hawaiian state government to the Communist Party on a silver platter."

Pillion has never been to Hawaii--and does not intend to go. He recently explained to the House Rules Committee that he fears Hawaiian hospitality would make him change his mind about statehood. But he nonetheless considers himself something of an expert on the subject. Said he to a newsman last week:

"I've never been to Russia either; yet I know they are a Communist country."

Influence Imported. Hawaii had a few defenders. Illinois' Republican Representative Harold Velde, who has never been accused of being a Communist sympathizer, said that the Communist influence in Hawaii stems from California, and added: "The state of Hawaii would be better able and more inclined to fight the influence of Communism as a state than as a territory." Nebraska's Republican A. L. Miller pointed out that a 1951 FBI report listed only 36 known Communists in Hawaii (as opposed to more than 20,000 in John Pillion's home state) and that seven of the Hawaii Reds have since been convicted.

Although much of the noise was about Communism in Hawaii, there were more basic factors working against the bill.

Southern Congressmen (including Speaker Sam Rayburn), fearing the two new states would dilute their anti-civil rights voting bloc, were strongly against the measure.

Massachusetts Congressmen (including Republican Leader Joe Martin) were acutely aware that one of the House seats to be given Alaska and Hawaii would be from their state, which barely qualified for its present number of seats under the last population apportionment. Said Massachusetts Republican Donald Nicholson: "We will elect somebody in Hawaii or Alaska to represent my state." Chimed in South Carolina's W.J.B. (for William Jennings Bryan) Dorn: "Is it not true that if our friend from Massachusetts were to lose his seat ... he will lose it to a man whom we have deported?"

Dorn presumably had in mind Harry Bridges (still undeported).

Steam Gone. The House voted 218 to 170 to send the statehood bill back to committee--and thereby kill it for at least this year. Democrats split almost evenly:

105 were for recommittal, 107 against.

Republicans were nearly two to one (113-63) for recommittal. A day later, Dwight Eisenhower gave his explanation for the defeat: "If you put them [Alaska and Hawaii] together, you instantly accumulate for your bill the opposition that applies to either one or to both. I would like to see the bill separated and have always stood for that." This, of course, was precisely why the House leadership had put both measures into one bill.

But together or separate, the chances of Alaska and Hawaii are dim for the foreseeable future; the steam has gone out of the statehood movement. Said California's Democratic Representative Clair Engle, an advocate of statehood, in opening the House debate: "If this legislation fails, it may postpone for many years, if not forever, the entrance of these incorporated territories as states--of the Union." H

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