Inventory

In Washington's grey, cavernous Union Station, the crowd was bigger than usual. Two blocks south, waiters in the Capitol restaurants idled among empty tables. The 78th Congress, its mind on the holidays, was. calling it a day and hurriedly piling into homeward-bound Pullmans.

Gathering for the first time on Jan. 6, 1943, the 78th Congress set sail on a high tide of optimism. Minority Leader Joe Martin, congratulating Speaker Sam Rayburn on his reelection, had cried: "This . . . will be a Victory Congress. ..." History will determine just how much the 78th had to do with the ultimate U.S. victory. But during the past two years, a soberer-than-average Congress had: 1) asserted its independence of the Chief Executive; 2) financed the war with whopping appropriations; 3) made a fitful start on reconversion plans. More specifically, the 78th, neither the best nor the worst Congress in U.S. history, had:

P: Appropriated $277 billion to the Army & Navy.

P: Upped the limit for the national debt to $260 billion.

P: Extended Lend-Lease and reciprocal trade, and the President's war powers.

P: Passed a $2.3 billion pay-as-you-go tax plan (the President had asked for $10.5 billion).

P: Heard New Dealing "Dear Alben" Barkley talk back to Mr. Roosevelt.

P: Killed NYA, NRPB, WPA.

P: Turned down a diplomatic appointment for the first time since 1889 (Democratic Boss Ed Flynn's nomination as U.S. Ambassador to Australia).

P: Committed the U.S. to international cooperation with the Fulbright and Connally resolutions (after studying and pigeonholing the more forthright E2R2; resolution).

P: Played host to such distinguished foreign visitors as Madame Chiang Kaishek. Winston Churchil. Liberia's President Edwin Barclay and President-elect W.V.S. Tubman.

P: Repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

P: Sent three inquisitive Congressional committees on junkets to world battlefronts.

P: And, as usual, immortalized an assortment of recipes and doggerel in the Congressional Record.

The 78th Congress made at least one reputation: Missouri's Harry Truman, with his plodding, earnest work on the Senate's war investigating committee, found himself skyrocketed into the Vice-Presidency of the U.S. But if history remembers the 78th, it will be more because of the colorful, noisy reputations that were lost. Texas' Red-baiting, ranting Representative Martin Dies decided he might as well not try for reelection. And the U.S. voters themselves decided that they could get along better without such famed isolationists as Gerald Nye. Ham Fish. Rufus Holman. "Puddler Jim" Davis and Bennett Champ Clark.

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