Jurney's End?

Florid, white-thatched Chesley Webb Jurney has been a Washington character for 44 years, the Senate Sergeant at Arms for ten years. Sartorially immaculate, he paddles around the upper chamber, beams amiably at all. Amiability notwithstanding, Jurney was deep in trouble last week.

It had begun last November when the Senate was debating poll-tax repeal. Because a quorum was lacking, the Sergeant at Arms was ordered to arrest absent members, march them straight to the floor. A Jurney deputy captured Tennessee's Kenneth McKellar in a hotel room and made Senator McKellar feudin' mad. Last week the gentleman from Tennessee showed just how mad that was.

A special committee meeting of five Senators was called to discuss Jurney's job; Senator McKellar nominated Mississippi's lameduck Senator Wall Doxey to replace him. The legislators, meeting secretly, called in Jurney, made him argue hard & long for his job. At week's end no decision was apparent. Jurney's destiny will wait upon the committee report and a Senate vote.

At stake was not only a Senator's vengeance but an $8,000-a-year salary (plus two cars and a chauffeur), one of the Senate's juiciest jobs. It is the Sergeant at Arms's duty, besides hunting up quorums, to police the upper chamber, arrange ceremonies, escort Presidents to inaugurations, buy tombstones for Senators buried in the Congressional Cemetery, sell the Senate's waste paper and useless documents and turn the proceeds over to the Treasury. The job is the topmost pinnacle in the eyes of Capitol clerks, pages, policemen and other attaches. Their excitement over Jurney's possible end buzzed all week through cloakroom and corridor.

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