Beau Ideal

He was seven when the Civil War was lost and a squadron of Union cavalry rode down a dusty road and into his home town of Lynchburg, Va. A blue-clad rider hauled him up into the saddle and asked: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" He was frail, sickly and small for his age. But he struck out wildly and screamed: "A Confederate major who shoots Yankees." Carter Glass never outgrew his frailty, his sickliness, his ferocity with fists and tongue. And he never forgot --not for a minute--he was a Virginian and a Democrat.

He was a poor boy and a poor young man. At 15, he went to work as a printer's devil. After he learned his trade he traveled the countryside as a journeyman printer with no baggage but a shirt, a fighting cock and a few books. Poverty kept him rebellious, but it also made him patient, diligent, capable of drudgery. He became an editor. At 30, by borrowing money, he bought the Lynchburg Daily News. Inevitably he got into politics. But he did not begin his real career until he went to Congress at the age of 44.

The Politician. He was almost unknown for ten more years. He made no important speeches; he introduced no legislation. He fought sickness (he walked on his toes because the jarring of his heels caused him pain), studied banking and monetary problems. Finally at 55 (in 1913) he wrote the Federal Reserve Act, proved himself politician and orator as well as thinker by engineering its passage through Congress.

Once during debate on the bill his backers cried: "Blast him, Carter! Dynamite him!" "Why," he asked softly, "use dynamite when insect powder will do?" One corner of his mouth curled up when he talked. Said Woodrow Wilson: "Carter snarled the Federal Reserve Act through Congress out of one side of his mouth. Think what he would have done with both sides." In 1918, Wilson made him Secretary of the Treasury. Finally, in 1920, at the age of 62, he went to the Senate.

The Dissenter. In many ways his 26 years in the upper house were sad and unproductive. He was a dissenter during Republican administrations. When Franklin Roosevelt came to power he remained a dissenter--torn between loyalty to his party and his conservative's fury at New Deal policies. He fought them endlessly, bitterly.

But old, out of step, often bitter, he remained the beau ideal of the Senate. He had no fear of political consequences; in later years he did not even campaign for office. There was dignity and gallantry about the homely little man. Sometimes, carried away by lost causes, he attacked his adversaries physically. Once he plunged at Huey Long --because the Kingfish had taken the liberty of calling him by his first name.

After 1942 he was too sick to appear in the Senate. But he did not resign. He lived on in Washington at the Mayflower Hotel, near death but refusing to die. Last week, as it must to all men, Death came at 88 to Virginia's Senator Carter Glass.

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