Weary Ox

"I have often felt sympathetic with the old ox down in my country--that had been worked all day in the sun, who sees over in the distance a little shade under a tree and then you can not hold that ox back; he wants to get under that shade. . . ."

A well-filled Senate listened to these words and knew they were not facetious. They were spoken in the familiar voice of Pat Harrison, but youngsters in the Senate had not heard the same ring in it before. Oldsters had not heard that ring for many years, not since the days when Pat Harrison's waistline was several inches smaller, not since he used to deliver soul-satisfying jabs at the Republicans in power, not in fact since the election of 1932 when he became a pillar of the New Deal. And no one needed to be told why the ring in his voice had returned. Now that Joe Robinson was dead, now that the New Deal had put on pressure to defeat him for the job of floor leader (TIME. Aug. 2), he was no longer a pillar of anything. He was just Pat Harrison speaking his mind. He warmed to his subject:

"I sometimes think I have traveled so fast that I'd like to get under the shade and rest a little while. I think there are many questions that deserve a little more deliberation and consideration perhaps than other people think those questions deserve. ... It is said that this is an Administration measure. I suspect that the President never read the measure in his life. Ma Dame Perkins may have read it. I don't know. I know if the measure is passed that Ma-- Dame is going to have a good deal of say in its administration. And, to be perfectly frank, because I would not want to withhold anything from my colleagues--" the old Pat Harrison's biting irony laid on its final lash, "that is one among many reasons why I am not for this legislation." Such was one of the high spots in last week's debate in the Senate. Ordinarily the U. S. Senate grinds slowly and exceedingly minuscule. Last week it ground fast but in vast confusion. Having taken nearly six months to make up its mind on the simple but profound question of the Supreme Court, it set out in one week to dispose of an infinitely more complicated issue: how to establish minimum wages and maximum hours in U. S. industry. Until almost the final roll call many Senators did not know how they were going to vote or why.

The bill, a revised and toned-down version of the wages & hours bill originally presented by the President (TIME, June 21), created a five-man board with authority to establish minimum wages up to 40-c- an hour and maximum hours down to 40 a week. The board was to proceed slowly, however, industry by industry and region by region, making exceptions for aged and infirm workers, for special industrial conditions, etc., inching toward the announced goal.

But Senators were assailed by a host of doubts: Would the scheme work? Was it better to make a bungling start than postpone it? Would the board become a bureaucratic incubus like NRA? Would their constituents think they were reactionaries if they voted against it? In this multiple uncertainty the debate was broken by a series of diversions:

P: Southern Senators alone were afflicted by few doubts. Senator Hugo LaFayette Black of Alabama was, they believed, playing with political fire by sponsoring the bill. Most of the rest, including Senator Pat Harrison, were certain that low wages are popular in the South not only with businessmen but with many a worker to whom a small wage looks big. Rather than deprive the manufacturing South of the wage differential they were prepared to secede from the New Deal. Outraged, Senator Ellison D. ("Cotton Ed'') Smith cried: "In other words, if South Carolina's living conditions are so kindly that it takes only 50-c- a day, for illustration, to enable one to live comfortably and reasonably, and in the New England States it takes a dollar and a half, then the wage in South Carolina shall be raised to a dollar and a half? Why . . . don't some of these people call in God and tell Him that He must stop this thing of making one section more advantageous than another. . . ?"

P: Senators from farm States were equally strong in demanding that if low wages should be raised and hours shortened, these things must not affect those who work for farmers. The bill excepted farm labor. Rather than secede the farm Senators proceeded to pack it further with a long series of reservations, amendments, exempting not only farm labor but all those who pick, pack, or process farm products.

P: Child labor opponents led by Senator Edwin Carl Johnson of Colorado, cut out the section of the bill which would have made the chief of the Children's Bureau of the Department of Labor (at present Miss Katharine Lenroot) virtually tsarina over child workers, with authority to abolish "oppressive child labor." In place of this discretionary power they voted in a mandatory provision excluding from interstate commerce all goods manufactured by children under 16 years of age (except farm products) and in case this should be held unconstitutional backed it up by forbidding the transportation in interstate commerce of any child-produced goods destined for a State where child labor is forbidden (adapting to child labor the provisions of the prison labor law last year upheld by the Supreme Court).

P: Even lynching was brought into the wages and hours controversy. Senator Copeland of New York who is a candidate for mayor of New York City and hopes for votes from Harlem (TIME, Aug. 2) made an attempt early in the week to attach an anti-lynching rider on a bill limiting the length of freight trains to 70 cars. After one failure, he tried again to attach his rider to wages and hours. It was finally voted down but only by 46-to-39.

P: Best diversion of all was the stand of Labor. Neither A. F. of L. nor C. I. O. was more than lukewarm to the wages and hours bill when hearings were held in committee. After all unions sell themselves to workers on promises of raising wages and shortening hours. If the Government undertakes this function it invades the domains of union leaders. To the majority of Senators Labor still means William Green, not John L. Lewis, and last week Mr. Green was in a pickle. He had given his qualified assent to the main idea of the bill, but some of his lieutenants were dead set against it. No A. F. of L. pressure for passage of the bill was put on any Senator. John P. Frey, head of the Metal Trades, and J. W. Williams of the Building Trades obliged opponents of the bill by announcing their opposition.

Pressed by Senator Black, William Green, however, did not have the nerve to back down. He wrote, "The Wages and Hours bill in the form in which it is now before the Senate does not meet the expectations of labor. However . . . rather than recommit the Senate Bill for further committee consideration, it would seem advisable to pass the best wages and hours bill possible in the Senate. . . ."

Passing the Buck. William Green's damnation-by-faint-praise practically settled the fate of the bill. If he were not prepared to oppose the bill openly why should Senators risk their necks by doing so? Save for Bulkley and Donahey of

Ohio, Burke of Nebraska. Gillette of Iowa, Copeland of New York, King of Utah, the only Democrats to vote against the bill were Southerners. All the rest in effect passed the buck to William Green. Save for Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. of Massachusetts and James John ("Puddler Jim") Davis of Pennsylvania, the Republicans voted in a block against the bill, in effect passing the buck to the Democrats for writing a bill of dubious workability that delegated great power to a single board. Thus the Senate approved the bill by 56-to-28. The House is expected to change it further, boosting it from 40-c--40 hr. to 70-c--35 hr. And no one expected even that to put an end to the passing of the buck.

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