R. F. D. to F. D. R.

(See front cover)

This week when the 75th Congress of the U. S. assembled, those who looked down from the galleries could find few gaps in the ranks of Senate oldtimers. Of eleven Senators who at the close of the last session could claim the distinction of having occupied their seats before the U. S. entered the World War, most were again to be in their accustomed places. One, however, was certain to be conspicuous in absence. Neither Death nor defeat at the polls had accounted for him. Senator George William Norris of Nebraska was ''unavoidably detained."

Senator Norris had something to do which he considered more important than attending the opening of Congress. All last week, while other Senators were assembling in Washington, in the little town of McCook on the Republican River in Redwillow County, Nebraska, George Norris took his usual walk from his house down to Floyd Hagenberger's barber shop to get his morning shave. From the barber shop he strolled as usual to the real-estate office of Carl Marsh, almost the only one of his cronies of bygone days with whom he still is intimate, for the rest have become critical of his philosophy as they have grown well-to-do while he has only grown famous. There in the real-estate office he sat as usual, passing the time of day with whoever dropped in.

But at the week's end came the annual change which has punctuated his life these 34 years past. At his home fronting on the park--a two-story stucco house with a lawn which the Senator diligently mows, with shrubs which he diligently clips-- Mrs. Norris began wrapping the comfortable old-fashioned furniture in sheets, a handy man began nailing up the shutters. Only one thing was unusual. When the Norrises went to the railroad station and boarded a train on the Burlington, their tickets read not to Washington, D. C. but to Lincoln, Neb. George Norris was going this time to present to the people of Nebraska, "who have done so much for me," something "that will benefit them after I am dead, that will benefit their children after them": a unicameral Legislature.

Legacy. Nobody denies George Norris his full credit for winning a unicameral Legislature to his State, but he did not invent the idea. Three of the original 13 States--Pennsylvania, Vermont, Georgia --in their first constitutions adopted during the Revolution, created one-house Legislatures. Each was coupled with a council or board of censors which acted more or less as a separate house and generally complicated politics. Georgia kept the arrangement for 12 years, Pennsylvania for 14, Vermont until 1836. But the example of the British Parliament and later the U. S. Constitution, with two houses, one more or less representative of the population by numbers, the other representing the upper classes and the interests of States, soon set the fashion for all State Legislatures.

Not until just before the World War did the unicameral idea get under way. Between 1913 and 1917 the Governors of Arizona, California, Kansas, Minnesota, Washington and South Dakota all recommended it. Constitutional conventions in Ohio and New York toyed with it. The people voted it down in Oregon, Oklahoma, Arizona. In Nebraska a joint legislative committee recommended it in 1915, nothing was done.

In 1923 Senator Norris took a hand in the matter. He wrote an article for the New York Times on "A Model State Legislature" urging that one small house, well paid, with few enough members to be carefully watched by the public, would be much better than the usual State Legislature. For years afterward Nebraska high-school boys used reprints of that article in their debates. But except for occasionally expressing his views, George Norris did little until 1934. Then a constitutional amendment was drafted, a petition circulated to put it on the ballot, and Senator Norris went off for his summer vacation at his camp in Wisconsin.

When he returned five weeks before election, everyone thought the amendment was dead. All except two daily newspapers in the State opposed it. So did practically all politicians including 20 of 33 State Senators and 82 of 100 State Representatives, but George Norris took the stump, spoke once or twice every day. He pointed out that in the bicameral Legislature 75% of all important bills are rewritten by conference committees to reconcile the differences between the two houses. In conference six legislators settled the fates of bills in secret and if a lobbyist could bribe two or three of the conferees he could usually have his way.

Said George Norris: "In every two-house Legislature, if we post the checks and balances after the end of the session, we shall find that the politicians have the checks and the special interests have the balances."

To the surprise and consternation of politicians, the amendment was adopted on election day by a vote of nearly 3 to 2. So this week George Norris marched proudly into Lincoln's skyscraper Capitol to look lovingly on his newborn legacy, to speak by invitation to Nebraska's new legislators. Said he:

"I congratulate you. . . . Every professional lobbyist, every professional politician and every representative of greed and monopoly is hoping and praying that your work will be a failure. . . . Your constituents do not expect perfection. They know that it is human to err, but they do expect and have the right to expect absolute honesty, unlimited courage, and a reasonable degree of efficiency and wisdom. . . . From now on Nebraska has a right to expect a business administra-tion."

Unicam. The important provisions of Nebraska's unicameral amendment are that the Legislature shall have one house of 30 to 50 members-presided over by the Lieutenant Governor who has no vote unless there is a tie. It elects a Speaker also, to serve as substitute presiding officer.

The members of the new Legislature as of the old are elected for two years, and meet every other year although they can arrange to meet more often. Instead of each drawing $800 every two years plus $10 a day up to $100 for each extra session, the legislators as a group will be paid $37,500 every year divided in equal shares. They are elected--a pet proposal of Senator Norris--on a non-partisan ballot without any indication of what party they belong to, not a wholly new thing in Nebraska politics since party circles for voting straight tickets were taken off Nebraska's ballot two years ago. Furthermore, one member has the right to require a roll call on any measure.

On the last bicameral Legislature was imposed the duty of redistricting the State and deciding exactly how many members the new chamber should have. The 100 members of the old House wanted the maximum of 50 members so that as few of themselves as possible would be left in the cold. The 33 members of the old Senate decided on 48 members. In one of the iniquitous conference committees to which Senator Norris so much objects the matter was thrashed out for days. Finally, with the aid of John P. Senning, professor of political science at the University of Nebraska, one of the advisers on the Unicameral Amendment,* the conferees were persuaded to compromise on a number which made for the most equitable redistricting: 43.

When Nebraska adopted Mr. Norris' amendment it revived the whole unicam- eral movement. Writhin three months bills for one-house Legislatures were pending in 18 States. More than half the States have now had such measures introduced and New York and New Jersey have special commissions studying the subject. The political science department of the University of Nebraska has had over 4,000 letters of inquiry on it. But the other 47 States are more than likely to wait until they see whether Nebraska's experiment justifies the unicameralists. Bicameralists claim that one house acts as a check to prevent the other from hasty action. Unicameralists insist that an extra house is no check whatever on anything except efficient legislation. They claim further that one house will reduce legislative buck-passing: what the legislators vote for becomes law, barring veto by the Governor. Although bicameralists argue that one chamber will be easier to corrupt than two, unicameralists expect exactly the opposite because the legislators cannot dodge responsibility, because being relatively few in number their individual acts will be in the limelight.

Finally they expect Nebraska's new Legislature to show a financial saving. For although with 43 members dividing the annual salary appropriation in shares of $872.09 (roughly twice as much as before), the total salary bill will be reduced about 30%, not counting the savings in salaries for clerks, pages, doorkeepers, etc., etc. of a discontinued chamber. The savings in postage, printing and mileage should be even greater. As an offset to these savings, the Senate chamber with its $4,500 bronze doors in the $10,000,000 State Capitol, which the late Bertram Goodhue designed, will have no real use, and to reduce the 100 desks in the House to 43 would require tearing up the floor (to change the wiring for the electric voting machine) and discarding the heavy carpet which is cut around each desk.

First test of the new system came in last year's election. An average of seven candidates filed for each seat. The primary reduced this to two a seat, or 86, of whom 60 were survivors of the old 133-member Legislature. Of the 43 elected 32 are former legislators. The 43 include n lawyers, n farmers, i farmer-lawyer, 3 ranchers, 5 merchants, 3 workers, i physician, i veterinarian, i editor, i insurance man, i capitalist, 2 bankers, i power plant operator, i high school football coach. One member from Omaha is a negro. Most of them are college graduates and it is generally agreed that only the best members of the former Legislature were elected to the new, not one notorious crackpot. All were elected without party labels, but the proportion of Republicans and Democrats is about equal, although the Democrats have had big majorities in recent Legislatures.

First real test will come when the new Legislature adopts its rules of procedure. Last week those rules remained a big unknown. Professors at the State university prepared a set of suggestions but whether the Legislature would adopt them was another matter. Several legislators have made pilgrimages to McCook in recent weeks to get Senator Norris' idieas but he refused to sponsor anything except general suggestions that all proceedings should be completely open & aboveboard.

The unicameral body also posed a problem for the press: what short words could be used to describe it in headlines? Only "the Legislature" is referred to in the law, no name whatever given to its members. Sophisticated newshawks now dislike "solons" and "Unicam" has little favor. One suggestion going the rounds of newspaper offices on the eve of the unicameral's meeting was that its members be called "eunuchs."

"Maybe I am wrong/' "If I were a citizen of Nebraska, regardless of what party I belonged to, I would not allow George Norris to retire from the U. S. Senate," said Franklin Roosevelt over a year ago. This was not mere political persiflage. George Norris is one of the few men in public life for whom the President has an almost reverential respect. That respect is shared by the great majority of Congressmen, by almost all newshawks in Washington and in every election by a majority of the citizens of Nebraska.

Chief cause of that respect is that no one who knows him ever doubts George Norris' 100% integrity. Frankness is almost a fetish with him. He carries it to such a point that he even tells the press what goes on in the secret sessions of committees. When he says that he is for the Common Man and against the Special Interests, it takes a double-doubting Thomas to disbelieve him, for his record backs him up at every point.

His other engaging traits include a mild manner, great personal modesty, a disarming habit of coupling every declaration with the frank admission that "maybe I am wrong," and a 15-year-old spirit of disillusionment about the possibility of getting anything liberal done for the benefit of mankind. These traits are genuine and at the same time more or less deceptive. Gentle Mr. Norris is not above personalities in debate. Modest Mr. Norris talks as often as anyone in the Senate, and tries to have the last word on every issue. Mr. Norris, who "may be wrong," in nearly every fight finds it impossible to believe that his opponents have honest motives. Disillusioned Mr. Norris never gives up a fight no matter how often it may be lost. He sticks when other Progressives in the Senate waver. All his successes are 'due to the fact that through years of weary waiting, his cocked eye-brow has never grown weary while he watchfully waited for an opportunity to come his way.

For all but one of the major accomplishments of his career, including Nebraska's unicameral system which he believes caps it, George Norris had to wait until after he was 70. Not until 1932 when he had been nearly 20 years in the Senate did events begin to run in his direction. In 1932 he won Congressional approval of the 20th Amendment of the Constitution, ending "lame duck" sessions of Congress. Then he secured passage of the Norris-LaGuardia bill restricting the powers of courts to grant injunctions in labor cases and forbidding them to entertain suits based on labor contracts that forbid workers to join unions. Next year followed TVA, to insure Government operation of Muscle Shoals for which he had been vainly struggling for a decade; the year after Nebraska's unicameral. One other major reform which he still hopes to leave behind him, is an amendment putting an end to the Electoral College and providing for the direct popular election of Presidents.

Mainspring. It is 75 years since George Norris was born on a farm in Sandusky County, Ohio, the youngest of eleven children. A few days before his second birthday his elder brother was killed in the battle of Gettysburg. When he was four his father died of pneumonia. He grew up to support his mother and nine sisters. Since then he has been the only male member of his family although he has married twice (his first wife died in 1901) and has three married daughters. Before he was 24 he had worked his way through college and law school, taught school for seven months near Walla Walla, Washington Territory, and returned from the far frontier to Nebraska. There he was shortly made prosecuting attorney, served three terms, then two terms as district judge.

But the career for which he will be remembered had not then begun, nor did it when he was elected a Representative in 1902. As a regular Republican he made his maiden speech on rural free delivery, declared that R.F.D., "touched with the magic wand of Republican encouragement and enthusiasm . . . has become a bright and living reality at the fireside of a million homes." The mainspring of his career between the era of R.F.D. and that of F.D.R. was an urge which gradually grew upon him. It took the form of insurgency and liberalism but it took other forms as well and at bottom it appeared to be an emotional objection to doing anything that was expected of him.

It made the milestones of his career and it was the touchstone of his success. It cropped out first in 1903. Contrary to usage, a member of the Democratic minority moved that Congress recess over Washington's Birthday. The haughty Republicans determined to defeat the motion. As a matter of course every member of the well-drilled Republican majority did what was expected of him, all except George Norris who voted with the Democrats.

Thereafter his insurgency gradually flowed into more useful channels but it did not become noteworthy until March of 1910. After waiting for days for a parliamentary opportunity, he suddenly produced a pocket-worn piece of paper bearing a resolution which would effectively deprive the Speaker of the House of his tsar-like authority. Speaker Joe Cannon declared it out of order. George Norris appealed to the House, rallied a coalition of Democrats and insurgent Republicans. The parliamentary battle was waged tirelessly for 36 hours during which Norris had no sleep. Then the vote was taken and the power of the Speaker was finally broken. It was George Norris' first great achievement and it made him famous overnight.

The same urge came over him in 1912. Regular Republican leaders offered to nominate him for Governor of Nebraska, but he divined that their purpose was to keep him from running for the Senate. So he did and was elected. The War offered him two opportunities to distinguish himself as an insurgent. In 1917 he was one of eleven Senators, Woodrow Wilson's "wilful men," who filibustered against the Armed Neutrality Bill. Nebraska newspapers scourged him for it. The outcry was tremendous. Norris waited two weeks and then asked the Governor to call a recall election so that he could be vindicated or ousted. The Governor refused, so George Norris went to Lincoln, hired a hall and, since he could get no one to introduce him, walked out on the platform and began to speak. A wildly enthusiastic crowd gave him his vindication. He then returned to Washington and became one of the famed six men (La Follette, Vardaman, Stone. Gronna, Lane. Norris) to vote against the declaration of war, declaring as he did so:

"I feel we are committing a sin against humanity and against our countrymen. I wish we might delay our action until reason could again be enthroned in the mind of man. I feel we are about to put the dollar mark upon the American flag."

After the War, George Norris began to take his insurgency into the field of public utilities. He became interested as chairman of the Agriculture & Forestry Committee to which bills for the disposition of Muscle Shoals were referred and soon he was regularly introducing bills for Government-operation of Muscle Shoals. But during the 1920'$ the times were out of joint for insurgents and Mr. Norris was changing. The drooping mustache with which he went to Congress became short and bristling, then disappeared entirely. His fighting spirit gave way to an air of disillusionment and a touch of humor.

In 1924 he found another way of doing things which a Senator is not expected to do. Only 63 and still in the prime of legislative life, he declared his intention of retiring from the Senate, but was persuaded out of it. In 1926 he committed what was considered political suicide by campaigning against the election of Philadelphia's Boss Vare to the Senate. In 1927 he decided that he would like to quit and become Governor of Nebraska to do something for his own State. In 1928 he again committed political suicide by openly supporting Al Smith. In 1930 he again made motions towards refusing to run for reelection. In 1931 when Progressives talked of nominating him for President he told them, "I am facing toward the sunset of my life," and advised them to rally behind someone else. He then supported Roosevelt. Last year he committed political suicide for the nth time and found a more striking way to do it. Refusing nomination on either Republican or Democratic tickets, he waited until both parties had chosen candidates and it became as difficult as possible for him to win. Then he ran for re-election as an independent and won handily.

Other ways that he has found of not doing what is expected of a politician: he never joined any church, never attended a Presidential reception, and having established that as a sort of personal usage, broke it by attending one of Franklin Roosevelt's parties in 1933.

All these things, however, are merely foibles of an unquestionably great man. At the close of his career to which he is so fond of referring, he will leave behind him such monuments as Norris Dam and the 20th Amendment which are far more than most great insurgents, Borah for exle or the late La Follette, leave behind in the way of positive achievement.

Six years ago Charles S. Ryckman, an editor of Fremont, Neb., won the Pulitzer Prize with an editorial arguing that the reason Nebraska regularly re-elected Norris was that through him it could take a slap at the East. Since then this idea has gained much currency, but unfortunately almost no Nebraskans subscribe to it. They do not mind political irregularity for they are themselves politically irregular, frequently electing Democratic Governors at the same time that they vote Republican in national elections. Senator Norris, who has never had a political organization at home, has generally a more powerful individual appeal. His insurgency and his opponent's anger nearly always make him a martyr. It began when he was deprived of all patronage for his revolt against Cannon (he still has none). His martyrdom has gone on year by year, with vituperative newspaper attacks and such follies as the regulars committed in 1930 when they tried to do him dirt by putting up a grocery clerk named George W. Norris to run against him in the primary. Under such circumstances there is seldom any difficulty for George Norris to convince himself and the voters that every election is a crisis in which sinister interests are striving to do him in. For George Norris on the stump does not shilly-shally about getting himself elected. Last autumn after fumbling for months with the idea of standing for re-election he went to the hustings, made as many as three to five speeches a day, filled about five-sixths of them with praise of Roosevelt as a practical Messiah, one-sixth with a personal appeal on the theme, "How can you turn me down if you believe in liberal Government?"

Nebraskans are quite willing to turn down George Norris' ideas upon occasion. Only last month, McCook held an election to decide whether to accept a PWA offer of $105,000, 45% of the cost of bringing in electricity from the Platte Valley Public Power & Irrigation Project, to replace power now supplied by Iowa-Nebraska Power & Light Co. McCook's voters turned it down by vote of 782-523. But McCook's voters will probably never turn down George Norris himself who, since he has just been reelected, cannot commit political suicide again until 1942 when he will be 81.

*This week on the day before the unicameral Legislature met, he published a book about it: The One-House Legislature, McGraw-Hill ($1.50).

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