Man with the Mustache

Even while Acheson was testifying before a Senate committee, Republicans in the House were hunting him with a legislative ax. The plan, an old one, was to cut him down with a rider attached to the State, Commerce, Justice and Judiciary appropriation bill. The rider provided that no money in the appropriation could be paid to the head of a" department who, in the past five years, had been with a firm which acted for a foreign government. Though it named no names, it was directed solely at Dean Acheson, whose former Washington law firm (Covington & Burling) has represented pre-Communist Poland, Iran and Pakistan.

Most Republicans, though they thought little of Acheson, thought even less of the idea; only a few more than half attended a caucus to discuss it, and of those who did show up, 33 voted against it. But the rider was dragged on to the floor and furiously debated. Democrats belabored it. No one could say much for it, and one Republican --California's Donald Jackson--had some pointed remarks to make against it. He would gladly vote for impeaching Acheson, he indicated. But the rider was "a trial by attainder . . . which says, in effect, that no man with a mustache can serve in public office." From the Democratic side, Oklahoma's John Jarman gibed at the G.O.P.: "I think the tactics being used today are exactly the tactics which have made the Republican Party so successful at remaining the minority party in our country."

The rider went down by 171 to 81, with two Dixiecrats *joining the Republicans in voting for it. The man with the mustache still had his job, and his pay.

Last week on Capitol Hill: P: Fourteen shirt-sleeved House and Senate conferees worked until 5 o'clock one morning patching up a new Defense Production Act, which the Senate promptly passed. This week the House jammed it through just two days before all control laws were due to expire. The bill whittles down Harry Truman's controls over prices, but still leaves him broad powers over the U.S. economy (see box). P: The House voted unanimously to end the state of war with Germany and sent the bill to the Senate. P: A House committee killed for this session the St. Lawrence Seaway project, an idea which has been kicking around for more than 50 years (see HEMISPHERE).

* Eugene Cox (Ga.), John Bell Williams (Miss.).

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