Norton's Triumph

Up in the House last week with fire in her eye rose plump, weathered Labor Committee Chairman Mary Teresa Norton. Prodded and sustained by the powerful gentleman at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Mrs. Norton had for a second time persuaded the House to take the Wages-&-Hours Bill away from the Rules Committee which had pigeonholed it.

Glowering in his seat across the aisle, just as he had last December when the House brought the original Black-Connery Bill to the floor only to amend it to death and bury it by recommitment, sat the most implacable foe that wages-&-hours legislation has in the House: Georgia's bushy-headed Edward Eugene ("Goober") Cox. Mrs. Norton's revised bill provided a universal floor for wages beginning at 25-c- an hour, to be stepped up within three years to 40-c-. It provided a ceiling for the workweek beginning at 44 hours, to be lowered within two years to 40 hours. It did not provide the one thing Mr. Cox and his fellow Southerners had liked about its predecessor: provisions for a differential to make the South's wage floor lower and its hour ceiling higher than the North's.

"Personally," exclaimed Wisconsin's Progressive Gerald Boileau whom Mrs. Norton had designated to speak in favor of the measure, "I do not believe any man in the country, whether he be in the North or the South or the East or the West, should be obliged to work and provide for a family on a wage of less than 25-c- an hour or $11 per week."

Snapped Mr. Cox: "If the gentleman had the power to fix the wages of labor, would he in the exercise of that power totally and completely disregard the ability of the employer to pay the wage fixed?"

Replied Progressive Boileau: "Any industry that cannot pay a decent wage has no justification for existing."

This time Mrs. Norton was able to keep the bill from death by amendment. The few minor amendments adopted exempted from the provisions of the bill agricultural workers, employes of any branch of the fishing industry, of weekly or semiweekly country newspapers with circulations of 3,000 or less. California's Charles Kramer relieved his colleagues' tension for a moment by offering an amendment exempting child actors from the child labor provisions. Dubbed the Shirley Temple Amendment, it was promptly adopted. But the tension returned as the bill approached its real test, and then as the first fateful roll-call got under way, Congressmen realized that the debate had been much ado about nothing. The motion to recommit the bill was swamped, the motion to pass it carried, 314-to-97.

Much ado about nothing also appeared the trouble that the House had taken in perfecting the bill. The Southern bloc in the Senate, which is determined that no bill shall pass which does not provide a wage differential for the South, agreed to a cloak room compromise.

To avoid a fight on the Senate floor it was agreed that the bill should be rewritten in conference. Meanwhile, Speaker Bankhead deferred naming the House conferees until this week. Thus it was assured that the compromise reached in conference should be dumped back into the House and Senate just before adjournment, when Congressmen will be too tired to fight hard or argue long.

"My prediction," said relieved Leader Barkley, "is an adjournment by June 10."

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