Counting Day

Connecticut's Congressman Richard Patrick Freeman got up from a sick bed to hobble down the aisle of the House last week and sign a petition to bring from the Judiciary Committee to the House floor a Wet proposal to modify the 18th Amendment. But the 145 signatures necessary to put the petition into parliamentary action were still incomplete as the document lay for the fifth day on the Speaker's desk.

It seemed a good time for blatantly Dry Congressman Thomas Lindsay Blanton of Texas to get up and twit the Wets on their poor showing. Actually it was a bad time. For at that moment another Texas Congressman, paralyzed Joseph Jefferson Mansfield, put his black-gauntleted hands to the wheels of his rolling chair, pushed himself up to the rostrum and squiggled his name in the 145th blank space. Derisive Wet whoops from both sides of the House squelched crestfallen Congressman Blanton.

The Parliamentary mechanics behind this Wet move involved a liberalization in

House rules last December. After due consideration the Judiciary Committee, three weeks ago, tabled (14-to-9) a Constitutional amendment to return liquor control to the States. One-third of the

House membership could, by petition, raise the question of whether or not the committee should be "discharged" from further consideration of the matter. The roll call vote would thus be on the question of discharging the Committee and not on the Constitutional amendment itself. But as the Wets saw it, such a vote would approximate sentiment on Prohibition. The Wets had no expectation of mustering the majority needed to bring the amendment to the floor, much less the two-thirds required to pass it. What they did expect was to compel all Congress-men--Wets, Drys and Weaslers--to stand up and be counted* for the first time since 1917 on an issue that will be one of the most ticklish in the 1932 campaign. Counting day, it was announced last week, will be March 14.

*Only figuratively. Roll calls are answered

from a sitting position.

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