Security & Service

Not even a special session of the Kansas Legislature, meeting last week to approve social security amendments to the State Constitution, could budge Nominee Alf M. Landon from his resolve to keep mum on national issues until his acceptance speech in Topeka next week.

The session was called because the Kansas Constitution puts responsibility for public charity on counties, whereas the Federal Social Security Act requires administration by States. In a five-minute message Governor Landon pointed to Republican platform proposals for revising the New Deal social security system, asked the Legislature to project amendments broad enough to permit the State to cooperate in any system which "may ultimately become the settled law upon this question." This the Republican-controlled Legislature promptly did.

The Legislature did not go home, however, before its Democratic members had had some fun bedeviling the Republican nominee, called the nation's attention to a few facts about Kansas. Most fun was had by Joe McDonald of Kansas City, blond, high-spirited Democratic leader of the Senate who lately journeyed to Washington to be coached for this occasion by shrewd Democratic Press agent Charles ("Smear Hoover") Michelson. Roaring with laughter and shouting across the chamber as he made his points, Senator McDonald gleefully recalled Nominee Landon's message to the Republican Convention proposing extension of Federal civil service.

"If civil service is good for the Federal Government, why not let's have some in Kansas?" barked he, moving that funds be appropriated to administer the State's civil service law, a dead letter since 1920. Promptly voting down his proposal, Republicans indignantly asserted that the merit system was so firmly established in Kansas that no law was needed to enforce it.

Undismayed, Democrats next turned to the ticklish subject of beer. Last year traditionally Dry Kansas said NO by 90,000 votes in a referendum on legalizing beer. But the Legislature then failed to follow through with a law fixing alcoholic content. Result: potent beer continued to foam unchecked in Kansas. Democrats charge that Governor Landon got the Legislature to dodge the issue and thwart the popular will because, as a prospective Presidential nominee, he was afraid his signature on a bone dry law would cost him support among Eastern Wets. Last week a Democratic proposal for such a law got only nine Senate votes. Even Joe McDonald was against it. "In Kansas," cried he, "we seem to have a unique Utopia in which the Drys have the law and the Wets have their liquor. It's true that most of the taxes go to Missouri, but since I like a nice cold glass of beer, and everybody knows it, I'll vote no."

The Kansas City (Kans.) Senator got back into form on the subject of Governor Landon's famed balanced budget and the means by which it was achieved. Pointing out that the New Deal had poured $460,000,000 of Federal money into the State, Joe McDonald heckled: "That Santa Claus in Washington has given the State of Kansas eight times what you've ever raised here, and laugh that off over there on the other side of the House."

As for the funds which Kansas had raised, Senator McDonald said: "You couldn't give this State back to the Indians, because they wouldn't take it, on account of the taxes that are being piled on the farmers here."

There was no grin on Joe McDonald's face when he told newshawks how he had headed a delegation to Governor Landon last December to demand immediate enactment of State social security laws. "We put it up to him and he told me that the needy in our county were getting adequate relief.

"I said to him, 'Why, Governor, do you know that we are able to provide only $1.08 a week for a family of three and $1.74 a week for a family of four?'

" 'Well, that ought to be enough,' he said.

" 'By God,' I told him, 'maybe you think it's enough, but down in Wyandotte County we know different.' "

By the session's end Michelson-tutored Joe McDonald had presumably forecast the general lines of the forthcoming Democratic attack on the Landon record, and his Republican colleagues were referring to him as "Congressman Zioncheck."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.