The Revolt that Failed

Georgia's tousle-haired Dixie demagogue, Eugene Cox, isn't at all sure that the majority of his fellow members in the House can be trusted very far. He thought up a neat little plan to stop them. He wanted to restore to the House Rules Committee its old power to bury any bill safely in a deep committee pigeonhole. What's more, he thought he could put it over.

"Goober" Cox counted on plenty of company: his fellow Dixiecrats, who wanted to bottle up Harry Truman's civil rights program ; Republicans who wanted to smother the Fair Deal; everyone who wanted to whack Government spending without having to take the rap for voting against popular expenditures.

Who Won? Republican leaders in the House, a more reactionary crew than their brothers in the Senate, rose in enthusiastic approval. At the very least, cried Minority

Leader Joe Martin, a return to the old rules might check a "destructive trend . . . toward bankruptcy and eventually a socialist state." Illinois' sharp-nosed Leo Allen, who pigeonholed the housing bill in the days when he ran the Rules Committee in the 80th Congress, held out an even brighter prospect. By voting on this one question, the House could decide "whether the entire Truman program will succeed or be defeated."

Leaving his seat on the Speaker's dais, Texas' Sam Rayburn stepped down on the floor for one of his infrequent speeches. "Who won the election in 1948 anyhow?" he demanded. Actually, shrewd Sam Rayburn was in a bit of a spot himself. If Goober Cox failed, the FEPC bill might be called up, which wouldn't help Sam Rayburn in his Texas constituency. Under the present rules, any committee chairman can bring his bill to the floor after the Rules Committee has sat on it for 21 days.

Pressures. Oklahoma's able Mike Monroney joined in. "Don't we trust ourselves?" he demanded. "Must we have a group of twelve men to protect us from ourselves?"

Pressure groups on both sides were working hard, stirring up constituents to wire or telephone their Congressmen. When the voting came, the Republican leadership stuck solidly by their Dixiecrat allies. But 64 rank & file Republicans deserted their leaders to join a solid front of Northern Democrats in smashing the great Cox rebellion by a decisive vote of 236 to 183.

It was a victory not so much for either party as for democracy. Grumbled Goober Cox: "The trouble was that there were too many featherlegs on hand today."

Last week the Senate: P: Defied the butter lobby by repealing the 48-year-old federal tax of 10-c- a pound on colored oleomargarine, and 1/4-c- a pound on uncolored. In the heat of debate, Wisconsin's butter-loving Alexander Wiley pleaded with his colleagues to remember that "the dairy cow is the foster mother of the race." The Senate granted only one concession to the butter makers: oleo would have to be sold in triangular instead of rectangular packages.

P: Postponed confirmation of Admiral Forrest Sherman as Chief of Naval Operations. It wanted to be sure first that Admiral Louis Denfeld had not been illegally fired for his support of the Navy's rebels in congressional hearings.

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