Slush Squad

Two months ago Senator George William Norris of Nebraska introduced a resolution for a senatorial investigation of 1930 campaign expenditures. Such an investigation four years ago resulted in excluding from the Senate Frank Leslie Smith of Illinois/- and William Scott Vare of Pennsylvania. Illinois and Pennsylvania were again having bitter senatorial contests which Senator Norris wanted to keep under sharp observation. The Norris resolution went to the Committee on Privileges & Elections, chairmanned by California's Senator Samuel Morgan ("Solemn Sam") Shortridge. There the resolution languished.

Last week Senator Norris, perceiving a plot, moved to discharge the Shortridge Committee from further consideration of his measure. In parliamentary practice such a motion is the next thing to an insult to a committee's chairman, because, by its adoption, the chairman is rudely thrust aside and the measure buried in his committee may be yanked from beneath him to the Senate floor.

When Senator Shortridge heard of the Norris motion, he was so wroth that he exclaimed to newsmen:

"Senator Norris knows there has been no attempt to delay his resolution, but if he thinks he has grown so big he can run the whole United States, he can go to hell!"

But Senator Norris did not have to "go to hell" to get action on his resolution. Two days later the Privileges & Elections Committee unanimously reported it out and, a day after, the Senate unanimously adopted it. Vice President Curtis promptly named a special investigating committee of five Senators: California's Johnson, Maryland's Goldsborough, Missouri's Patterson (Republicans), and Washington's Dill, New York's Wagner (Democrats). To finance the inquiry into 35 senatorial campaigns the Senate allowed $100,000. The committee was almost immediately rendered headless by the resignation of Senator Johnson as chairman. His official excuse: "My time is so wholly occupied with my duties that it is utterly impossible for me to undertake additional tasks." Suspected reason: an unwillingness to take the lead in stirring up possible G. 0. P. campaign scandals like those of 1926. North Dakota's Senator Nye was named chairman in his place.

Senator Charles Samuel Deneen of Illinois, just defeated for renomination by Representative Ruth Hanna McCormick, telephoned Senate friends from Chicago to hasten the Campaign Fund Investigation. Deneen workers broadly insinuated that Mrs. McCormick's campaign expenditures had been excessive.

Pennsylvania's Senator Joseph Ridgeway Grundy who goes into a primary election next month against Secretary of Labor James John ("Puddler Jim") Davis for the Republican senatorial nomination, grew so excited detailing to the Privileges & Elections Committee alleged "slush funds'' being raised against him by the Vare-Atterbury faction, that Chairman Shortridge had to call him sharply to order. Secretary Davis, when he heard a Senate committee would investigate Mr. Grundy's campaign expenditures along with his own, rapturously exclaimed:

"Thank God that, so far as Pennsylvania is concerned, money will not be able to buy the Senatorship in that great State!"

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