Basement Bargaining

After one parliamentary false start that bogged down after 45 minutes of acrimony in a premature adjournment, the House pulled itself together last week in stout resistance against the ukase of the Anti-Saloon League of America and shunted the First Deficiency Appropriation bill, carrying the Senate's $24,000,000 prohibition enforcement amendment, into a basement room at the Capitol. There, behind locked doors, five Senators and three Representatives went to wrestle mightily over the season's major Dry issue, far from the public glare.

What took place last week on the House floor was highly technical. Behind the technicalities was a defeat for the Anti-Saloon League that must have made Wayne B. Wheeler revolve in his Ohio grave. Over the most potent prohibiting force in the U. S., the Republican House machine rolled to the tune of 240 to 141, leaving the League, for the first time since the 18th Amendment, flat and broken by the legislative wayside.

A first skirmish . . . the battle will go on," explained Dr. F. Scott McBride, the League's arch-lobbyist.

Not all Dry leaders, though, were behind the $24,000,000. Samuel Edgar Nicholson, associate New York Anti-Saloon League Superintendent, protested the position taken by the national League. To Dr. McBride he wrote: "I hope that the League will find a way to get out of this situation with as little harm as possible and then make sure that we do not get caught in such a jam again."

Situation. The Senate had attached to the Deficiency bill an amendment by Georgia's dry Harris providing the President with an extra $24,000,000 for prohibition enforcement. Secretary Mellon opposed this, because the money did not pass through the Budget; because it only put more agents in the field without increasing the auxiliary branches of enforcement (courts, Coast Guard, Civil Service Commission, etc.); because a survey of needs, he thought, should come first.

Passed by the Senate, the bill was returned to the House in altered form. A conference was necessary to iron out differences. What should the House instruct its three conferees to do? First, a Democratic Dry group sought to bind the conferees to support the Senate's amendment in advance, an irregular parliamentary procedure. An impassioned snarl resulted, broken only when, after 45 minutes of fierce debate, the Republican majority forced adjournment and turned the issue over to the Rules Committee.

Two days later the Rules Committee produced a resolution, the adoption of which would send the disputed measure to conference in the regular way, with the House conferees in formal disagreement with the Senate but free to bargain to the best of their ability. In effect, this resolution was aimed at the Senate amendment. In adopting the resolution the House predicted its final vote on the Senate's $24,000,000 amendment--against.

Blocs. The House's vote revealed political inconsistencies and party splits. The 240 majority was composed of:

1) Most of the Republican organization (194) with wets like Massachusetts' Tinkham and Illinois' Britten voting arm-in-arm with vociferous drys like Michigan's Hudson and New York's Stalker.

2) Wet Democrats (46), mostly from Tammany; and one wet Socialist.

The 141 minority mustered the super-dry Southern Democrats (129) under party leadership of the Messrs. Garrett, Garner and Byrns; and miscellaneous Republicans (10), including wets like New York's La Guardia, drys like Iowa's Dowell.

Motives. Rules Committee Chairman Snell (New York) described and classified the amendment's supporters according to motive, as follows: "First are the hysterical drys, who will do anything they are told to do by the active head of the dry organization; next are the bitter wets, willing to do anything to make prohibition a farce; third are the politicians who are seeking to rehabilitate themselves with their constituencies by voting dry after supporting a wet Presidential candidate; and finally there is a group willing to do anything to embarrass the incoming administration."

Recriminations. The House's debate was fanged with many a poisonous word, mostly spewed at the Anti-Saloon League and its attempt to dominate the House by a circular letter from Dr. McBride. Dr. McBride sat in the visitors' gallery, facing the Speaker and behind the festooned clock, through which for years Wayne B. Wheeler used to peek out as his minions did his will on the floor below.

To the McBride ears came this from New York's rambunctious Black: "What the Anti-Saloon League lost in brains when Wheeler died, it more than gained in impertinence under McBride."

Ohio's arid Cooper said: "I regret I must break on this question with my very good friend Dr. McBride. . . . God has given me a conscience and I must follow its dictates."

Bargain. In the secret conferences, trading possibilities were offered by other Senate amendments to the Deficiency bill. The Senate called for publicity on all tax refunds of $10,000 or more; it supplied the next President with $250,000 to make a law enforcement survey. In the basement bargaining to follow, the House conferees might possibly accept these amendments provided the Senate backed down on its $24,000,000 dry fund. In the event of a deadlock, in conference, with neither branch of Congress receding, the entire $84,000,000 Deficiency bill would fail of passage.

Significance. The House showed a strong and unprecedented inclination to resist the dictates of the Anti-Saloon League on prohibition legislation. Beneath the parliamentary complications of the issue and the veneer of fiscal concern about the Budget system seemed to lie a tendency, even among ardent drys, to follow the commands of the new Administration and pursue moderate, middle-of-the-road enforcement--in other words, to continue the farce with politic solemnity and let Mr. Hoover proceed "constructively" with the "experiment . . . noble in motive."

Aftermath. Georgia's Harris, author of the amendment, "analyzed" the House vote thus:

"It shows the Republican leaders, Tammany Hall Congressmen, Philadelphia machine Congressmen, Mellon-Pittsburgh machine Congressmen, Thompson [Chicago] machine Congressmen and Representatives from other great cities do not believe in enforcing the prohibition law. . . ."

A point of order cut Mr. Harris short. One house of Congress may not discuss the other critically.