Trouble Brewing

In a most unfamiliar posture--hat in hand--the Administration last week went to Congress with a request. That attitude was adopted because Congress showed marked signs of being angry. Four weeks ago, when the Administration offered the famed "draft property" bill--which would permit the President to requisition any property in the interests of defense--Congress, tired of not being consulted about the defense program, let out a "No!" that the neighbors could hear.

The Government's original spokesman was stiff, judicial Under Secretary of War Robert Patterson. Judge Patterson wanted authority for the Administration to deal with strike-bound plants, with recalcitrant employers. He wanted authority to get the specifications and designs for an improved weapon whose owners were asking (by War Department estimates) 100% more than the cost of its production.

Under existing law, the Army has taken over a locomotive crane, blueprints of a device for converting 1903 rifles into semiautomatics, a number of lathes, a 25-gallon copper still. But nobody was more upset than single-minded Judge Patterson at the outcry that under the "draft property" act the Administration could "take a man's watch or stifle the freedom of the press." Said he in surprise: "No such things were ever contemplated." But when he canvassed for support outside Congress, he ran into the same fear.

Wendell Willkie, asked to back the bill, threatened to take the stump across the country against it unless it was modified.

Last week Judge Patterson offered a modified bill. Its terms limit the requisitioning power to "any military or naval equipment or munitions, or component parts thereof, or machinery, tools, or materials necessary to manufacture of such equipment or munitions." Congress was still sore about the whole subject, but it was willing to listen.

A significant hint of how Congress felt came unexpectedly from Senator George.

No New Dealer, he has nevertheless supported the Administration's foreign and domestic policies ever since he became chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. But Senator George cares deeply for the dignity and power of the Senate.

Last week, during a debate on the Administration's request for emergency powers over merchant shipping, he burst out against "a great many of the things we are doing [that] have not any proper connection with any legitimate defense program." He demanded that "when we are called upon to move into the actual range of fire," the U.S. people, through its Congress, make the great decision for itself.

Isolationists whooped that they had won a convert. Actually, the Senator was simply reasserting the Senate's rights, protesting unnecessary concentration of executive power under the screen of national defense. But the flare-up indicated how much crockery will fly when the Administration makes its next big legislative proposal--as it will this week in asking price-fixing powers for Leon Henderson (see p. 55).

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