The House Week

Work Done. The U. S. Representatives :

P: Appointed committees, with Republicans in control.

P: Altered the Revenue Act of 1928; passed it 365 to 24; sent it to the Senate.

P: Received back from the Senate the Deficiency Bill; disapproved a change made by the Senate; sent the bill to joint conference; approved conferees' change; sent the bill to the Senate again.

P: Debated the Alien Property Bill.

Tax-Cutting. Secretary of the Treasury Mellon had said that the people's taxes could be cut only $225,000,000 with safety in the next two years. The Ways & Means Committee had raised this figure to $232,735,000 in a Revenue Act it reported last fortnight (TIME, Dec. 19). Last week, when they altered and passed the Revenue Act, the Representatives overrode the Ways & Means Committee at two points and voted to cut the people's taxes by $289,735,000. The first alteration, reducing tax revenues some 24 millions, aimed to benefit corporations with incomes of $15,000 or less. Such corporations constitute about 70% of all U. S. taxpaying corporations. Leaving the tax on larger corporate incomes fixed at 11 1/2%, the amendment graded small corporate incomes taxes as follows: 5% on $7,000 or less, 7% from $7,000 to $12,000, 9% from $12,000 to $15,000. John Nance Garner, Texas Democrat, was the author of this alteration. He and his partisans were joined by 33 Republicans, mostly from the Northwest, in the 212-to-182 vote that put it through.

Mr. Garner also inserted a clause abolishing consolidated returns by affiliated corporations.

The second alteration, amounting to $33,000,000, was the work of Michigan Republicans led by James Campbell McLaughlin. The Ways & Means Committee had recommended reducing from 3% to 1 1/2% the tax on factory sales of Michigan's chief product, automobiles. The Michiganders asked for entire repeal. Farmers'-Friends joined the Michiganders. Democrats swelled this opposition to a 245-to-151 final vote. These changes having been made, Chairman Green of the Ways & Means Committee conferred anxiously with his Republican colleagues at the majority-party floor desk. They asked to have the Revenue Act sent back to the Ways & Means Committee for conference. The House refused, 300 to 94. Last-minute news from the White House, that President Coolidge insisted on Secretary Mellon's lower tax-cut figure, availed nothing. When the vote on passage was taken, there remained only 24 "Nays" at Chairman Green's command. "And so," as the Congressional Record says at such times, "the bill was passed."

Speaker's Wit. The House was treated to a characteristic bit of its Speaker's wit just after the Revenue Act was passed. Seeing that the Republican tax program had been defeated in the voting, Democrat Garner made "a parliamentary inquiry." Why, he asked, should a majority of the Representatives appointed to confer on the Tax bill (when it comes back to the House from the Senate), not represent the majority which had just passed the bill? Though it was dinner time, and he loves to dine, Speaker Nicholas Longworth smiled at this delay. "For the time being," said he, "the Chair would say he would regard that question as being more Democratic than parliamentary."

"Joke." Stocky, ruddy James V. McClintic, Oklahoma Democrat, arose vexatiously soon after the reading-of-the-journal one day. "Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the House," said he, "some one has introduced a bill, and has signed my name to it, which, if enacted into law, would allow the Secretary of the Navy to buy for every officer of the Navy, a Cadillac, a Packard, or a Rolls-Royce automobile. Everyone knows that such an idea is foreign to that which would be expressed by me. I do not know who did this. . . ." The House laughed. If ever the Navy had a harsh critic, he is James V. McClintic. It was voted to correct the record to show that Mr. McClintic was not responsible for some jokester's practical prank. Alone among the legislators to protest that the House should investigate such time-wasting buffoonery, was Thomas Lindsay Blanton, Texas Democrat. No investigation was ordered.

A resolution which Representative McClintic did introduce last week asked investigation of a $34,000,000 discrepancy between the 1919 estimate and the actual 1927 cost of the new U. S. airplane carriers Saratoga and Lexington.

Again, Magruder. People on the "outs" with an Administration often have their innings with Congress. So it was with Rear Admiral William Pickett Magruder, whom Secretary of the Navy Wilbur lately silenced and sidetracked for his public allegations of Navy extravagance and inefficiency (TIME, Oct. 3 et seq.). Last week Admiral Magruder was called before the House Naval Affairs Committee and told to speak freely. Admiral Magruder spoke (see ARMY & NAVY).

Coal Ultimatum. Hearing how many a potent coal mine operator had declined to accept Secretary of Labor Davis's invitation to a strike-settlement conference (see THE CABINET), Victor L. Berger of Wisconsin, lone Socialist in the House, offered a resolution to have the U. S. take over the coal mines if the operators sought to "continue to rule or ruin, as they see fit, one of the Nation's basic industries." In 1902, when under similar conditions President Roosevelt issued a similar ultimatum, the coal operators surrendered. Last week, the House referred Mr. Berger's resolution to the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce.

Returning Seizures. Alien properties seized during the War and still held by a U. S. custodian are now valued at $270,000,000. Many of these properties the U. S. will "buy," i. e. retain and pay for. Example: German ships, such as S. S. Leviathan (once the Vaterland). The

Alien Property Bill, passed last session by the House but blocked by the Senate filibuster, authorizes payment of $138,000,000 worth of such claims, and also of claims of U. S. citizens against Germany. Last week this bill reappeared in the House to be redebated. Its early repassage was predicted. Shopping. John Quillin Tilson of Connecticut, the Republicans' hard bitten but venerable floorleader, moved that the week had been so strenuous the House should take Saturday off, "to buy Christmas presents and attend to other matters." None objected. The House had already voted itself a Christmas vacation from Dec. 21 to Jan. 4.