They Face the People

The Congressmen, nearly all 531 of them, had gone home to face their constituents. What did they find? Were the people angry with them because they had struck many a shrewd blow at Franklin Roosevelt and his Administration? Or were the citizens impatient because they had not struck harder and better-aimed blows? On the answers hung great things--most especially, the elections of 1944.

In the big cities, Congressmen slipped back almost unnoticed. Boston newspapers all but ignored Majority Leader John McCormack, who hurried up to the White Mountains, and Minority Leader Joseph W. Martin, who sat, fully dressed in tie and coat as always, in a rocker on the porch of his Cape Cod cottage. But in the small towns their Congressman's return was news; interviews, picnics, speeches, delegations.

Most Congressmen were fagged out. On his first night home, St. Louis' bustling Walter Ploeser slept a full ten hours for the first time since January. South Dakota's balding Karl Mundt had lost 20 pounds in Washington.

>Congressman "Pat" Kearney wanted to get out and tour his Upper New York State district. On his first day back home in Gloversville, he had visited his widowed mother in the old white house where she takes in roomers. Then he had gone to the local headquarters of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, where, as its onetime national commander, he is heard with respect. He hoped to get out to see his constituents in industrial Schenectady, in the hilly resort country of Hamilton County. But first he had to face a union delegation headed by the C.I.O. United Leather Workers, bosses of the men & women who fashion the fine, expensive, hand-stitched gloves in Gloversville's aged brick factories.

The union men seemed to be boiling. The Leather Workers rank among C.I.O.'s most leftist groups; they mince no words. Their program is simple: all-out support of Franklin Roosevelt and Russia. Bluntly their leader told Congressman Kearney: "Your labor record smells."

But Pat Kearney had expected such beefs--he had voted for the Connally-Smith-Harness anti-strike bill, had voted to override the President's veto. Now he defended his course, said he was certain he had expressed the will of a majority.

A check-up that day in Gloversville revealed that Pat Kearney was right. Said the manager of the Western Union office: "Pat had to vote for that bill. You should have heard the mothers and fathers of soldiers who came in here to send telegrams to their boys. . . . They were out for blood. They couldn't understand a strike going on, and they couldn't understand Roosevelt not doing anything. . . ." The secretary of a union local added a wry note. He had been ordered to write a letter to Congressman Kearney demanding a vote against the anti-strike bill. "I had it nicely typewritten," he said, "then I put in a little note in my own handwriting explaining that for me, he could vote for the bill. After all, I got a kid out there in Africa. . . ."

> Three hours after he arrived home in Fayetteville, Ark., scholarly James William Fulbright was whisked off to a country party, complete with hillbilly band. Democrat Fulbright, listening to Arkansas Democrats, found that they were satisfied with Congress. But they had a few reservations about Mr. Fulbright himself, about his sudden emergence as postwar planner (TIME, June 28). Said Farm Bureau Head H. S. Mobley: "Congressman Fulbright's talkin' about the peace over there. That's all very well, but what about over here, where we can't even get our milk picked up?" Farmers wanted to know about the feed shortage, higher prices for poultry; merchants asked why canned goods had higher ceiling prices in other states than in Arkansas.

> Rock-ribbed Republican Jesse Wolcott had little to fear in the way of questioning from his rock-ribbed Republican constituency on Michigan's Thumb. The Thumb's thrifty sugar-beet and dairy farmers sent Jesse Wolcott back to Congress even in the 1932 Roosevelt landslide. He knows they are disgusted with the Administration's handling of the home front. His constituents, he learned, take for granted that Franklin Roosevelt will run for a Fourth Term and they will vote against him, no matter how the war is going. In his talks to luncheon clubs and his chats in the lobby of Port Huron's Harrington Hotel, paunchy, round-faced Jesse Wolcott found that his people favor price control, though they feel it has been terribly mismanaged; and feel that agriculture is being regimented instead of regulated. They are also against a sales tax.

> Alabama's John P. Newsome, Birmingham radio wholesaler, arrived home with a bad case of food poisoning, spent his first three days in bed. But his telephone kept ringing, and Newsome believes he talked to all his 500,000 constituents those first 72 hours. He heard many a complaint, but he felt he had nothing to apologize for. The majority of his Alabama constituents are for Roosevelt 100%, applaud him in the newsreels. But they were glad Congress overrode Mr. Roosevelt on the anti-strike bill.

> Los Angeles' Will Rogers Jr., serious son of the late famed humorist, was not so sure that Congress' decisions were for the best. Off on a mission to London, he sent his constituents an acid personal resume of Congress' work. An ardent Roosevelt man, he wrote:

"The past six months have been bitter, partisan and have sent crashing down many of the great social gains of the past ten years--out of malice preparatory to the 1944 election. The main energy of Congress has been directed to discrediting the Administration on the home front. . . .

"Congress has not 'had time' to pass a bill concerning soldiers' allotments. It has not 'had time' to consider important bills on America's intent to cooperate with other nations after the war. It has not 'had time' to decide whether we should rank China with other nations legally. . . . "

> Hollywood's bachelor Congressman, grey-thatched John M. Costello, member of the Military Affairs Committee, flew to the coast with Lieut. General Henry H. Arnold and Britain's Sir John Dill for a quick inspection of aircraft plants. To John Costello the aircraft workers unburdened themselves: they were shocked when they saw the first tax deduction on their paychecks. They did not mind paying now, but how long would this go on? (See p. 21.)

> Tennessee's freshman Congressman Jim McCord, of Lewisburg, learned at first hand some of the tragedies of small business. A Rotarian took him to his Shelbyville hosiery mill, which he now called his "graveyard." Of 54 knitting machines, only five were working, and those on odds & ends. Said the millowner: OPA would allow him only 30 days' supply of raw materials, he could not get labor, his business was going to pot, he had spent the whole morning poring over a new OPA ruling on rayon hosiery and its meaning was still not clear. Jim McCord, a good Democrat, looked, nodded. His constituents are exasperated by bureaucratic bungling, are solidly behind Congress in its fights with the President, but as good Southern Democrats will not revolt from the Party or the President.

> Washington's Warren Magnuson spent little time in his cubbyhole office, but could be seen day or night in the lobby or grill of Seattle's Olympic Hotel, where he talked to hundreds of Seattleites. One day he dressed up in kilts, marched down to Victory Square to greet a group of visiting bagpipers from a Vancouver shipyard. The talk he heard made Democrat Magnuson uneasy. Said he: "The temper of the people is alarming. We've got to streamline these war agencies or the people will swing too far and have them abolished entirely."

The U.S. Congressmen were learning. Generally speaking, thus far they seemed to have found that the people: 1) approve of Congress, and, in the main, of the 78th's record; 2)a re mistrustful of bureaucrats; 3) are explosively angry at OPA regulations; 4) are generally satisfied with Mr. Roosevelt as Commander in Chief.

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