Leadership & Credit

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Ernest Lee Jahncke journeyed to Wooster, Ohio, last week and told the Young Men's Republican Club: "The present Congress opened with loud yells for leadership emanating from the Democratic side. The President has supplied so much leadership that our friends of the opposition are just a little bit dizzy. . . . His program for economic reconstruction is a triumph. . . . Democratic members are entitled to full credit for their share in the proceedings . . . but, had they flouted his policies and presented no program of their own, they would have received as violent a rebuke at the hands of the American people as any with which Democracy has ever been castigated." When newsmen in Washington asked Speaker Garner what he thought of the Jahncke speech, the hard-bitten little Texas Democrat fairly snorted: "Leadership? Why, President Hoover has led us into the greatest panic the country or the world has ever known. . . . Instead of asking Congress for four new assistant secretaries, the President had better keep the ones he now has here at work instead of letting them run around the country on Government salaries and expenses making political speeches. . . . We Democrats are more interested in relieving the country of Hoover's mistakes. The country will determine if Mr. Jannicke or Janeck, or whatever his name might be, is right."* Thus did party warfare return to the Capitol. For almost three months Speaker Garner has ruled the House with care and quiet, to a legislative record for his party. With only the narrowest margin of Democratic control, he has, by his own personal force, kept his party united and moving constructively down the middle of the legislative road. The Republican minority has had an affectionate respect for him as shown by its participation in the uproarious Garner demonstration by the whole House after Bicentennial exercises. The Garner leadership is called the "wonder of the day" at the Capitol. As evidence of his non-partisan co-operation with President Hoover, the Speaker could point to the overwhelming passage by the House of the Debt Moratorium, the Reconstruction Finance Corp., the Federal Land Banks' increased capitalization, the Glass-Steagall bill (see p.11). Democrats are hard at work upping taxes, cutting expenses to balance the budget. But when Republican politicians like Mr. Jahncke claim all the credit for these relief measures, Speaker Garner gets fighting mad. Warned he: "It's well enough to talk of a political truce but let me tell you that the kind of truce we intend is not that the Administration shall continue hostilities while we abstain from them." Last week Speaker Garner led the House into a clear-cut split with President Hoover on Government re-organization for economy's sake. Instead of giving the President blanket authority to trim and weed and consolidate which he requested fortnight ago, the House, by a vote of 215-to-22. created a seven-man committee of its own to survey the executive field and report by April 15 where and how reorganizations could save $100,000,000. Some Republicans flayed this Democratic move as a futile gesture. Representative Mapes of Michigan sneered: "Who thinks that an adequate study can be made in 60 days?" Most Republicans however, voted for it as a token of their co-operative support of Speaker Garner. ''I am delighted," remarked President Hoover when he heard that the House had at last tackled re-organization of the Federal machine. But he still believed, he added, that his method of blanket executive authority was better. President Hoover, personally inclined to keep the spirit of the truce and to claim no political credit for his relief measures, has shown more co-operation with the Democratic majority of the House than have the members of his Cabinet. Last week Democrats were able to point accusing fingers at Secretary of War Hurley,-- Secretary of the Treasury Mills, Secretary of the Interior Wilbur and Secretary of Agriculture Hyde as officials who would not ''play ball'' with the House on economy and reorganization. The Speaker's management of the House continued to inflate the Garner-for-President boom. Texas Democrats endorsed him to a man. His name was put into the Georgia primary by proxy. Likewise in Nebraska and California his friends sought instructed convention delegates. Well aware that presidential politics could ruin his House rule and spoil his party's legislative record, Speaker Garner turned sternly away from all this commotion on his behalf. As a presidential possibility, though, he was approached last week by newsmen seeking his views on Prohibition. His reply: "You'll get nothing out of me on that subject. Not a word! I've got a big enough job on my hands now. Every time I give an opinion on anything--tariff, taxes, the Mormon Church or pigsticking in Argentina-- somebody says, 'Well the blink-blank! I'm against him. . . .' I've no intention of making a declaration on any question with which Congress does not have immediate concern." Partisan rowing later spread from House to Senate where New Hampshire's Moses sarcastically "marvelled at the moderation with which Mr. Garner began his campaign for the Presidency." Senate Democrats pounced into the fray and the whole Capitol rumbled and roared with the stridencies of party warfare. Just as President Hoover was congratulating Congress on its "patriotic non-partisanship" (see p. 11), that peaceful spirit of co-operation seemed to vanish in a din of angry words.

*Pronounced Jenn-key.

*Irrepressible Secretary Hurley last week clashed with Democratic John Jacob Raskob. Declared Mr. Raskob in New York: "I have good information that President Hoover will run on a Prohibition referendum platform if his party should adopt such a platform." Retorted Mr. Hurley: "Mr. Raskob is in a position to speak much more accurately of the amount of money he and his associates have spent slandering and misrepresenting the President than he is of the President's views on the 18th Amendment. . . . I'm not speaking for the President and I don't think anyone else can."

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