Full Senate

Since Jan. 3 the U. S. Senate has got along with 95 members and West Virginia with only one Senator. Neither Senate nor State seemed to suffer appreciably under this arrangement. Nevertheless when Rush Drew Holt celebrated his 30th birthday last week, the Senate spent two full days arguing over whether he was constitutionally entitled to the Senate seat to which West Virginia elected him last autumn.

His father, his mother, his sister and some 200 neighbors were on hand to watch Rush graduate into the Senate. Bespectacled, wirehaired, snaggletoothed, he eagerly posed in every position cameramen could suggest, beside his birthday cake, pointing to his birthday on the calendar, at the foot of the statue of Kentucky's Henry Clay who became a Senator at 29 because the Senate did not know his age.

The young West Virginian, whose chief backer is United Mine Workers, whose chief occupation in his State legislature was to get taxes imposed on utilities and chain stores, had no reason to doubt that he would be seated. A Democratic majority of 41 in the Senate assured him of that. His only miscalculation was that he did not expect the Senate to honor him with two days of graduation oratory.

Taking as their text the words of the Constitution (No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the age of 30 years. . . .), Senators enlarged for hours on their meaning. Did that mean that a Senator must be 30 when he was elected? Or when his term normally began? Or when he claimed his seat? Senator Hiram Johnson of California excused his argument against the last contention by turning to the Holt parents in the gallery and declaring: "I take this course solely because I believe it is every man's duty to do the things he thinks he ought to do."

Equally apologetic was Senator Tom Connally of Texas--one of five Democrats to oppose Holt. Said he: "I get no pleasure in taking the position I am taking. Every impulse of my carnal nature calls for a vote for him. But every impulse of my intellectual nature demands a vote against his seating." Later Mrs. Holt said she could have "wrung Senator Connally's neck" for talking that way. Rush Holt's white suit got all wrinkled during the first day's orations. When he and his family returned next day, he had on his second best, a brown coat and grey trousers. In that garb he stood by until the Senate finally decided to complete its membership by taking him in, 62-to-17.

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