Ramspeck, The Whip

Thirteen years a Congressman, Georgia's serious, bespectacled Robert Ramspeck has sweated hard and long for civil service and fair labor legislation. Through it all he has been a loyal New Dealer. Last week, partly as a reward and partly because his chunky shoulders could take it, he got a bigger job. Beaming with pleasure, grey-shocked Majority Leader John W. McCormack tapped him to be Democratic whip, to succeed Pennsylvania's late Patrick J. Boland.

Curly-haired Pat Boland hardly ever talked in the House, worked quietly in the halls and cloakrooms which are the whip's domain. Fervent Bob Ramspeck has made many impassioned speeches for his favorite causes. But he also knows the slick-floored, smoky, gossip-filled cloakrooms as few Congressmen do.

All his life he has lived politics. A stripling lawyer out of Atlanta Law School, he went to Washington at 21, became chief clerk in the House post office. He learned more ropes as secretary to a Congressman, went back to Georgia to be a deputy U.S. marshal, city attorney of Decatur, and State Representative. In 1929 he returned to Washington as a Congressman, has been there ever since. Slowly he built up a reputation as a fair, sound, open-minded man, a debater able to take care of himself, and a man who tended to business.

As an all-out opponent of spoils politics, he fought long for civil-service extension, became the darling of reform-minded women voters. In the last two years Ramspeck-sponsored bills have put some 500,000 Federal employes under civil service. As ranking Democratic member of the Labor Committee, liberal Bob Ramspeck helped carry the ball for the Wagner and Wage & Hour Acts. His only slip: this spring he championed the hapless Pensions-for-Congress bill. Faced with public revolt, Congress changed its mind. Ramspeck relented but argued solidly that the bill was "misunderstood," that Congressmen should be pensioned off the same as other Federal employes.

Job of a whip is to keep a finger on his party's pulse, head off revolts against Administration policy, keep a sharp lookout for opposition deals. With the Speaker, Sam Rayburn, and Majority Leader McCormack, he helps plot procedure and strategy. When votes are needed, the whip must bring them in.

Bob Ramspeck's friends know him as a conscientious worker who shuns social life, stays at home with his pipe and books. Even Georgia Neighbor Gene Cox, with whom Ramspeck has tangled on many a labor bill, praised Neighbor Ramspeck's ability. Pleased, too, was Leader McCormack, of Massachusetts. Said he of Southern Bob Ramspeck: "He has a national mind."

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