Mister Speaker

(See Cover)

The Congress went home in the heat--nerves and bodies strained and weary, judgments irritable and unsure. In months of grueling tug of war with the Executive, the Congress had tried to regain some of its old independence, and had partially succeeded.

Now Congress came back in the crispness of early autumn, after two months' rest with the people back home.

Had the march of events and the visits home changed the temper of Congress?

--No Congressman came back white-hot mad. The first sign of trouble came from a regular source of trouble: Montana's acid, acrid Senator Burton K. Wheeler. He was against drafting fathers. The issue boiled briefly, but by week's end. under a mass of cogent argument against it and the pressure of heavy fighting in Italy, Wheeler's support faded utterly.

--North Carolina's stubborn Representative Robert L. Doughton, chairman of the Ways & Means Committee, loudly demanded simplification of income-tax returns. "Muley" Doughton, who had helped make things complicated for years, now snorted: he himself had had to hire a "tax expert" to help figure out his Sept. 15 return. But he cooled off; a new tax bill would take a long time.

--Few months ago the Fulbright Resolution, pledging U.S. postwar cooperation, would have thrown the House into an uproar. Congressmen feared it as a bold proposal. Now it seemed to be a very mild little document, less specific even than the Republican foreign policy adopted at Mackinac (TIME, Sept. 20). This week it was set to slide through the House with a whoop.

As a matter of fact, no major issue faced the 78th Congress as it reconvened.

New Mood. What had the representatives of the people found back home?

--Less grumbling over the home front. Texas' New Dealing Lyndon Johnson asked a country storekeeper if he thought OPA should be abolished. The storekeeper pulled out his sugar bin, replied: "In the last war this sold for 30-c-. Now it's 7-c-. OPA is the difference."

--A firm conviction that Congress should have a major share in postwar planning.

--Sobersided Congressmen reported the temper of the people: Congress should retain every bit of its hard-won independence, but should use its new power to work with the President for the common good.

Franklin Roosevelt, sensitive as a weather vane, had already detected this new mood, had shrewdly addressed Congress in like temper (see p.19).

This was the new mood of Congress and the new mood of Washington. But this was only the first week of the session. On the eve of election year, with politics weighing more day by day, in a House almost equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, anything can happen. To prevent anything disastrous happening to the Democrats is one job of Texas' Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn, 42d Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

But Sam Rayburn has a greater responsibility: to guide, shepherd and rule the sometimes unruly 435 Representatives of the U.S. people.

Powerful. Sam Rayburn's job has often been called the "second most powerful job in the nation." From the days of Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, the German Lutheran pastor who presided over Congress' first sessions in New York, Speakers of the House have written their will and words into U.S. history. Some of the mighty:

--Gaunt Henry Clay, only man who ever stepped into the Speakership the day he entered Congress, was the first to crack the whip over the House, the first to organize it firmly.

--James Knox Polk, who guided the House in the hectic Jacksonian era, took more abuse and needling than any other Speaker, before or since. Polk put his, and Jackson's, program through Congress and graduated to the Presidency.

--Bearded James Gillespie Elaine rose to the Speakership in 1869, in a year when only two-fifths of the House members were holdovers. He organized the House on strict party lines, held unquestioned leadership.

--Of "Uncle Joe" Cannon, who held the Speakership from 1903-10, a minority member truly said: "I have seen him wield more power than the President." Uncle Joe owed much of his power to Maine's resolute Tom Reed, who had so rigged House procedure (the famed Reed's Rules) that the Speaker became, in effect, a dictator. Uncle Joe reaped the whirlwind in the spirited "revolution of 1910," when the House, under the prodding of a young Representative from Nebraska named George Norris, rewrote the rules.

Once the rigid rules were broken, Speakers were forced to wield power by tact, persuasion and favors. "Nick" Longworth kept a firm grip on the House through shrewd committee maneuvers; Texas' Jack Garner held sway by means of his long seniority and experience.

The Compromiser. No one, in the whole 155-year history of the Speakership, held it in a more difficult time than Sam Rayburn. Some Washington observers have called him "the greatest compromiser since Henry Clay." But Henry Clay compromised on issues; Sam Rayburn works to bring about compromise among factions. His technique is something to watch.

A short, stocky man with an almost evanescent fringe of white hair around his bald head, he spends much time leaning on the railing in the rear of the House. There, and in the cloakrooms and offices, he buttonholes his colleagues, lobbying for legislation which he feels must pass, sympathizing, advising, counseling. Sam's approach is disarmingly personal; when all other arguments fail, he says to a recalcitrant legislator: "You will be doing me a big personal favor if you vote for this." His difficulties are immense. The White House has been taking on more & more power for a decade. Sam Rayburn's job is to translate into Congressional action the will of a President who has frequently regarded Congress with cheerful contempt.

Most notable piece of Rayburn generalship occurred in the summer of 1941, when Congress wrestled over extending the one-year life of the draft. For weeks it seemed certain Congress would defeat the bill. Sam Rayburn sweated day & night, persuading, cajoling, pleading with the members. Congressmen worried desperately over the political effect of the bill on mothers & fathers. But Sam Rayburn was convinced that defeat of the bill would be disastrous to the U.S. When the day for the vote arrived, Sam Rayburn was in a state of honest mental anguish; neither he nor anyone else knew for certain how the votes would go. As the clerk called the roll, Sam kept accurate count: the final tally showed the bill passed 203-202. Before any coward could switch his vote, Sam Rayburn, in a shrewd tactical move, announced the total, gaveled down all moves for reconsideration. He had won; and the U.S. Army was not disbanded four months before Pearl Harbor.

The leadership that brought Sam Rayburn through that crisis was grounded in experience: 31 years in the House (only two have served longer: Illinois's Sabath and North Carolina's Doughton) ; 25 years on the Interstate Commerce Committee (five as its chairman); and four years as majority leader before he ascended to the Speakership in 1940.

He has never been a 100% New Dealer, but he helped devise, draft and fight through many a major New Deal measure, notably Rural Electrification, the Securities Exchange Act, the Utility Holding Company Act. He has differed with New Deal strategists, but once Administration policy has been decided upon, he has, with but minor and rare exceptions, fought tooth & toenail to carry it through the House. He has been coldest to New Deal labor measures.

Man in a Dark Suit. In Washington, Sam Rayburn, 61, lives alone in a four-room apartment on Q Street, just off Connecticut Avenue, to which he invites friends to taste his own expertly prepared chili. When not dining at home, he usually goes to Martin's, an unobtrusive restaurant on Wisconsin Avenue, where he invariably occupies the booth next the kitchen door.

He dresses quietly, usually in dark suits, and seldom straps on the $375 diamond-studded cowboy belt given him by Fort Worth Publisher Amon G. Carter. His pleasures are simple. He likes to fish; he is most at home among his small circle of intimates, largely members of the Texas delegation in Congress, with whom he swaps stories of Texas history and local politics. He drinks very lightly, does not play poker, reads heavily--history and Westerns.

His job is his life. He was ten years old when he decided to become a politician; and a few years later he set his heart on the Speakership. He got what he wanted and he likes what he got. Once, after a satisfying day in the House, he said, unabashed : "I love the House of Representatives."

There is a chance, however, that Sam Rayburn may be asked to desert his love, as has many another strong Speaker before him. Polk was the only Speaker who advanced to the Presidency, but Clay, Elaine, Reed, Champ Clark, Jack Garner and others had Presidential or Vice Presidential ambitions. It so happens that by 1944 the South's Sam Rayburn, a solid, middle-of-the-roader, a man who can placate Congress, may be just the kind of running mate Franklin Roosevelt desires. In that case, Term IV may be Sam's first --in a different job.

Deep in the Heart. When Sam Rayburn made the decision that molded his life he was a barefoot boy chopping cotton on his father's 40-acre farm, near Bonham, Tex. As befits a U.S. politician, Sam was born in a log cabin, the eighth of eleven children. His father had fought in the Civil War, settled in Tennessee, moved to Texas when Sam was five.

Sam soaked up Texas history (Bonham was named for a heroic messenger of the Alamo); he also followed contemporary politics. His hero, and the hero of many another Texan at the turn of the century, was Joseph Weldon Bailey, a towering, rugged character, a mighty orator, a political reformer who rose to be Democratic leader in Congress, then graduated to the Senate. Sam Rayburn likes to recall the day when, as a ten-year-old boy, he got permission to saddle up his father's mare and ride twelve miles to town to peep breathlessly through a flap in the Fairgrounds tent while Joe Bailey held an audience spellbound.

The Rayburns were Hard-Shell Baptists, and poor as the dirt they worked in. Father Rayburn told his eight sons again & again: "Character is all I have to give you. Be a man." But when Sam finally left the farm for college, Father Rayburn, solemnly shaking hands with him at the station, pressed $25 into his hand. That was the total cash capital of the Rayburns.

At East Texas State Teachers College Sam swept dormitory floors and rang the college bell. He taught school until he could run for the State Legislature, a job he coveted because it would pay him $5 a day and give him a chance to study law at Texas University. After two terms in the Legislature, he was Speaker of the House: before he had finished his law course, he had won a seat in Congress.

The Rancher at Home. Thousands know Sam Rayburn of Washington, the shy, hardworking, orderly minded man who has a kind word for the lowliest of Capitol employes. Very few know Sam Rayburn, the rancher, the Squire of Bonham, the North Texas cattleman.

In Fannin County, the Rayburns are known as "black-dirt folk," the flattering description of the more opulent farmers and cattlemen who own the county's best rich, deep black soil. They stand apart from the folk on the "grey-dirt" farms, where only a thin layer of slate-covered loam hides the limestone.

The Reyburn home in Bonham is a big white house with twelve rooms, four 20-ft. white columns in front, four sleeping porches, 14 rocking chairs and almost as many couches, and a Brobdingnagian butane gas stove in the kitchen. The farm has 150 acres; there are 208 more acres on a neighboring farm, and 917 on the Rayburn cattle ranch 13 miles away. Sam's brothers, Tom and Jim, run the farm and ranch; his sister Lucinda, known to all as Miss Lou, is the mistress of the house.

In the living room, near the pink-tiled fireplace, Sam has a flat-topped, eight-legged desk, flanked by pictures of Robert E. Lee and Franklin Roosevelt. Upstairs is his den, lined with volumes of Texas history. The Rayburns live well: breakfasts of ham & eggs, biscuits and honey; lunches and dinners of fried chicken or steak, great slices of cold tomatoes and sliced Bermuda onions, cornbread and homemade jelly, and homemade ice cream cranked out in an old-fashioned freezer by Bobby, the colored cook. The steaks are from Rayburn cattle, straight from the frozen-food locker in Bonham.

When Sam is home he helps in the chores, visits in the Bonham general store, rides about the ranch to inspect his 200 white-faced cattle. Sam's favorite spot is the one-story ranch house, nestled in a grove of oak trees. Here is no telephone, no mail delivery; only a yawning fireplace, walnut beds, and electric stove for steak broiling and an old-fashioned icebox, usually filled with watermelons. Here, on the hot summer afternoons, Sam Rayburn lolls around, often in his shorts, letting the sweat roll down his bald head. Or fie inspects the solid fence-posts hewed out of bois d'arc (pronounced, in Texas, bo-dark), or sits popping huge chunks of red watermelon into his mouth from the end of a rancher's stiletto, or plays a little dominoes with his brothers. (They usually win.) At night he can sit on a rope-bottomed chair in the tall grass and gossip with his friends, while his two terriers catch cicadas and Hereford cattle low in the distance.

This is home, and Sam likes it. As he left the ranch ten days ago to return to Washington he drove to nearby Denison to board the Katy's Bhiebonnet. Driving in his tan Pontiac through the windswept streets of Denison, Sam heard the loafers under the broad store awnings call: "Good luck, Mister Sam."

Sam Rayburn needed the good wishes of all Texans--which he has 365 days a year--and then some.

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