"What Are You Trying to Do?"

Usher L. Burdick of North Dakota draped his huge 72-year-old frame over the reading stand in the House of Representatives and fixed a jaundiced eye on his colleagues. He was irked by continuing criticisms of U.S. farmers. He was disgusted by the bitter debate on economic controls.

"When I hear some Sears & Roebuck pistol-toting cowboy from Brooklyn insinuate how the Government has tailed up the farmer at the expense of all the rest of the people," said Republican Burdick, it does not set well with me ... You complain against the beef men. I am one of them . . . I am willing to take a loss on my cattle, and it means $8,000 loss to me on the one rollback. I am willing to stand for that if it will help the entire country .; . If I was concerned only with my own interests, I would vote against this control bill, but I am interested in the welfare of the whole United States. I do not think these controls will do much controlling ... I am not willing, however, to deny the Administration the means of stopping rising prices if it believes that can be done."

Congressman Burdick's contention was that farmer, factory worker, industrialist, consumer, are all in the same boat; inflation may wreck all of them. Hence, he was going to vote for the Administration's bill. Usher Burdick shouted at his colleagues: "What are you trying to do?" He shook his head, bellowed a parting shot: "Well, I will be damned if I know," and marched back to his seat.

Can't Work with Handcuffs. The House giggled and guffawed appreciatively for two full minutes. Then, with hundreds of little shears flashing, it went back to pruning away the Government controls in the Defense Production Act. Whatever Usher Burdick thought about it, the House preferred to take a chance on inflation (which few members regard as a real danger) rather than let the Administration attach itself to any more of the U.S. economy. All last week the House worked, leaving the Administration a few snippets, but cutting out the things which Harry Truman said he needed most.

The Administration continued to protest. Chief Mobilizer Charles Wilson went on the air to warn: "I cannot work effectively with the handcuffs the pressure groups are forging for me now." And Mr. Truman made the gesture of inviting the country's top labor leaders to Blair House, there to promise them that he would go on fighting, and to ask them to help him out. But there was little the labor men could do --except threaten to ask for higher wages the minute the new control bill is passed--and Mr. Truman knew it. Labor leaders had tried to talk up a letter-writing campaign among their rank & file, but no one listened. They suggested that the President might veto the bill. But he only turned a "poker face" to the suggestion, one of the conferees later mournfully reported. Mr. Truman was licked on the bill.

Silence from All Over. Having lost already, the Administration Democrats turned to a simple strategy. It was to let the coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats (whom the Trumanites will carefully tag as "Dixiecrats," not Democrats) go on wrecking the White House's bill, but to demand roll calls--from 15 to 20 on the final day--on every major amendment. Then, if prices soar, the villains may be easily pointed out to the voters. As laid out last week, it was a plea in political bankruptcy--an argument that the party which can't even run its own Congress is not evil, just ineffectual--but it was the best that the Democrats could think up. They had waited for the country to come to their aid with a barrage of mail, but the silence was deafening.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.