Making of a Statesman

FIGHTING LIBERAL--George W. Norris--Macmillan ($3.50).

Eight weeks before he died, last year, in his stucco house in McCook, Neb., the late, great ex-Senator George William Norris finished dictating his autobiography. Fighting Liberal is not a great book. His heroic battles in Congress were no longer vivid in its old (83), tired author's mind. Like many another old man, George Norris at the end was reliving his youth. As the story of a boyhood in the frontier, post-Civil War Midwest, Fighting Liberal is authentic Americana.

Frontier Mother. George Norris' father was a farmer living in the "Black Swamp" country of northern Ohio. George was only three when his father died. But he remembered his mother well. In his recollection of her, Mary Magdalene Norris emerges as the archetype of frontier woman:

"Both my father and my mother were uneducated, and it was with great difficulty that they wrote their names. Both were able to read, and it was in reading that my mother found her greatest pleasure. . . .

"I never heard a song upon the lips of my mother. I never even heard her hum a tune. . . . She was a confusing mixture of sternness, gentleness, and strength of will and purpose. She had borne twelve children, and had buried three of them. When the harvest required it, she had taken her place in the field. She had planted and tended the vegetable garden. She had spun the cloth, and had made the clothes which my father, my sisters . . . and I wore. . . .

"Among my most vivid recollections . . . is of her sitting straight and rigid in a chair, reading to us from the only book in our home, the Bible. Each year she read the Bible through. On Sunday afternoons she would gather us to her side and, opening the worn pages, read for hours. It never seemed strange that, devoted Bible student that she was, she was not a member of any church."

Home's Heritage. Young George went to country school, took part in spelling bees and won arithmetic contests, joined a debating society. Debate revolved around topics such as: "Resolved, That man is a free moral agent." One day, in jest, he proposed the topic: "Resolved. There is more pleasure in living with a neat, cross woman than with a good-natured, slouchy woman." In the rugged frontier, George Norris found there was no one who would defend the slouchy woman. He did, and won.

There was rarely any money in the Norris home. Young George remembered well the day the first coal-oil lamp arrived. He gathered and shelled hazelnuts for months to earn enough money to buy an accordion. When he got it, the first tune he played was Jesus, Lover of My Soul.

Despite lack of money, life in that plain farm home was good: "There on that farm I lost all fear of poverty. I learned to live most simply, and I learned to get a great joy out of work. It never occurred to me in those years that the lack of money was of any consequence. I grew up to believe wholly and completely in men and women who lived simply, frugally, and in fine faith. I learned that fear was inspired in men and women who could not reconcile themselves to the possibility that hardship and sacrifice might confront them in battling for the right."

As the Tree Grows. Thus was forged the man who battled for many a right and many a cause in the forum of the House and Senate. The man who led the fight to overthrow the tyranny of Cannonism, who abolished lame-duck Congressmen and conceived the mighty TVA, remembered another childhood scene:

"There was that warm spring afternoon when mother, who had been busy through out the entire day, called to me to assist her in planting a tree. . . . I looked up at her, and it came to me she was tired. The warmth of the afternoon and her exertions had brought small beads of perspiration to her brow.

"So I said to her: 'Why do you work so hard, mother? We now have more fruit than we can possibly use. You will be dead long before this tree comes into bearing.'

"Her answer was slow to come, apparently while she measured her words.

" 'I may never see this tree in bearing, Willie,' she said, 'but somebody will.'

"So many times in the battles in Congress . . . my mother's words that late spring afternoon came to my ears."

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