Lord of the Citadel

(See Cover)

For seven months of 1954 the 83rd Congress labored. Sometime in the eighth month it will rest. But the political clock will be ticking ever closer to the first Tuesday after November's first Monday. Senators and Congressmen will worry whether the record of their seven-odd months of labor will look good enough on that judgment day. By last week the record was all but complete, its remainder largely predictable. How good is the 83rd's record?

Since neither the Democrats nor the right-wing Republicans had programs of their own, the question must be answered in terms of President Eisenhower's legislative program. Much of Dwight Eisenhower's extensive program has been enacted; much of it has not (see box). More of it ran into trouble in the Senate than in the House. Early in the session the Senate was becalmed for weeks in the Sargasso Sea of debate on the Bricker Amendment to curb treaty-making powers. As late as last week the Senate was foundering in a filibuster's tempest. It began this week still off course in a move to censure Joe McCarthy.

In the House of Representatives, President Eisenhower did not always find clear sailing either, but there the atmosphere of burgeoning accomplishment was less noisily fitful, more quietly apparent. There, a bill's defeat was seldom due to arbitrary jamming of the legislative machinery, but could be explained in terms of political realities. That the House did well by the President can be largely credited to its leaders, in particular to a lawmaking veteran's practiced, nimble touch on the legislative keyboard. The veteran: Joseph William Martin Jr. of North Attleboro, Mass., 45th Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Map for Huckleberries. Dwight Eisenhower was recently heard to marvel, "I can't understand how Joe Martin knows what's going to happen in the House months before it happens. It's uncanny." In Speaker Martin such prescience is composed partly of second nature, partly of careful listening and persistent observation, partly of his power to make his wishes come true.

When in January 1953 Joe Martin mounted the dais to assume the duties of Speaker for the second time (he was Speaker in the Republican 80th Congress, 1947-48), he told his colleagues, "I love this House . . . In this forum is worked the will of the people, a forum that we must ever strengthen, never weaken. Here lies the true citadel of the Republic."

As lord of the citadel, Martin governs the House in the same way that a democracy governs its people--by the consent of the governed. He is the leader of 219 Republican Congressmen, politicians who admire proficiency in their craft and usually recognize that the essence of good politics is teamwork. Among them, Speaker Martin is the master professional, a standing achieved largely by learning, in infinite detail, about the team. Said one teammate: "Joe knows how we'll vote before we've given it much thought."

In his mind's eye, Martin carries a map of the U.S., divided into congressional districts. From his many travels through 47 states, Joe has painted in the map with voluminous data. The map is somewhat blank in Mississippi; Joe has never been there because "there aren't any huckleberries there for Republicans."

President of Indiana. On the surface, Martin's homespun New England ways sometimes seem clumsy. Like Longfellow's blacksmith, Martin, the son of a blacksmith, has crisp black hair and a long cowlick reaching to his shaggy right eyebrow. In public, his words often get jumbled, as they did last week when he was about to name Indiana's Charles Halleck, Martin's majority leader, to a welcoming committee for South Korean President Syngman Rhee. Martin first referred to Rhee as "the President of India," then checked himself and blurted, "the President of Indiana." Finally, on the third try, he got the title right.*

But when he is with "the boys," his Congressmen, he shows a deep understanding of human nature, a quaint, rough-hewn humor and uses a judicious mixture of stern and gentle talk. From his storehouse of political facts, Martin, like a much-loved baseball coach (he was once a semi-pro shortstop), knows when to cajole and when to suggest.

"Don't vote with us on this one," he recently told a Congressman worried by re-election troubles, "it'll hurt you. Just keep it quiet and vote the other way." But the Congressman voted with the Republican leadership, and Joe asked, "Did you misunderstand me?" Said the Congressman, "Hell no, Joe. If you had demanded I vote with you, I wouldn't have done it. But you were so decent about it, I couldn't vote against you, and besides, I think you were right."

On the other hand, Martin once let fly when he found that two western Congressmen missed a vote on reclamation projects in their states because they were trout fishing. "You don't deserve to come back," growled Martin. "I can understand a man not voting with us when it would hurt him. I can even understand a man being absent when a vote doesn't directly affect him. But this one affected your part of the country. If you don't take care of your people, they won't take care of you. So far as I'm concerned, you can go fishing forever."

Deep-Grained Pragmatism. In the 83rd Congress, Joe Martin's belief in teamwork has extended to the White House where, in Monday morning meetings of congressional leaders, he has become Ike's grand legislative strategist. At those meetings the Senate's William Knowland harps on the idea of his forum's "coequal" status, and chants unhelpfully about his difficulties. By contrast, Joe Martin keeps his peace, leaves detailed reporting on the House to Majority Leader Halleck until Ike asks, "What do you think, Joe?" Then Joe tells the President what laws he thinks should be proposed, and, abiding by Ike's decision, does his best to deliver. "To be a leader, you've got to follow," explains Halleck. "How do you go to your own people and ask their support for a President if only a few weeks before you've opposed that President?"

Martin does not pretend to be a political philosopher. His conservatism is more a matter of temperament than of ideology. Day by day he deals with specific problems through the party machinery of representative government, and he is rarely tempted to bead any series of his opinions or decisions on a string of generalization. In a speech last year, he summed up his deep-grained pragmatic approach. Said Speaker Martin: "We [Republicans] are not reformers, not do-gooders, not theorists, not the advocates of any alien philosophies or political dipsy-doo. We are just practical Americans, trying to do a practical job to reach practical goals. We do not belong to that school of political thought which has for so many years pursued the fallacious proposition that if a little bit is good for us--ten times as much is just wonderful."

Following the clinical rule that too big a dose is harmful, Joe Martin's Congress this year delivered a legislative prescription that, though perhaps too sparing in spots, contains a little something for almost everyone.

The year's biggest threat to Joe Martin's prescription came on a Democratic move to send back to committee the massive tax-revision bill. The Democrats wanted to raise individual exemptions and wipe out the proposed deductions of dividend income. Rather than argue his case on the House floor, which he does infrequently, Martin called a caucus of G.O.P. Congressmen.

He told them this bill was a "corner stone" of the President's program and that no Republican could vote against it and claim to be an Eisenhower supporter at election time. Then Joe collected on more than 30 of the many I.O.U.s he holds, for favors he has done, like getting a creek fixed in one man's district, a patronage job for another's constituent, or a deportation order deferred for the constituent of still another. Result: anticipated defections, particularly in the Ohio and Illinois delegations, did not materialize. The Democratic maneuver, abetted by only ten Republicans, was voted down, 210 to 204.

The President's most thumping defeat in the House came on his public-housing request, but the Speaker salvaged enough to deliver a face-saver for the Administration. As Charlie Halleck explained the trouble, he could not ask Michigan's Jesse Wolcott, the committee chairman involved, to sponsor a public-housing bill, because "Jesse spent years barnstorming around the country denouncing public housing. So did I, for that matter." When the bill came back from the Senate for the settling of differences between the two Houses, Speaker Martin moved in with a compromise formula. It was accepted and last week the bill was adopted.

"Feet in the Fire." The team of Martin and Halleck is a powerful combination. While Martin is making tactful requests, Charlie Halleck. ruddy-nosed and glint-eyed, is charging up and down the aisles of the House chamber, telling his troops, "Damn you, you've got to be with us on this one. The President needs your support. So do I." The session's crowning personal success for Halleck was the farm bill, which he saved from defeat under farm-bloc opposition to Agriculture Secretary Benson's sliding price scale of 75% to 90% of parity. Halleck, who has represented his Indiana farm district for 20 years, thought he could win on a compromise of 82 1/2% to 90%, and told the President so. Said Ike, "Charlie, you're the captain. Go ahead."

Charlie went ahead, with an assist from Joe, who told his boys not to argue, just vote. Said Martin: "An umpire just calls a ball a ball. He doesn't stop to explain that it's high and outside or low and inside. That's what you should do." Halleck won his farm-bill gamble, but his driving tactics eventually stirred up some resentment among the hard-pressed troops. "Charlie is holding our feet to the fire too much," carped one G.O.P. Congressman. The resentment converged on the President's health-reinsurance plan. Deciding that the bill was not crucial to the Administration, 75 Republicans threw off Halleck's harness, jumping the traces to defeat the bill. Health reinsurance was Politician Halleck's sacrifice play, the price of delivery on other measures.

To help keep the legislative gears well oiled, Charlie Halleck uses "the Clinic," a secluded Capitol office comparable to Democratic Leader (and former Speaker) Sam Rayburn's "Board of Education," where Mister Sam's friends can sip at a bourbon-and-branch-water. Teetotaler Martin rarely visits the Clinic, but there, at the end of a long day, Halleck quenches the thirst of his assistant whips and plans the next day's work.

Frigid Work. The Senate's machinery is less well lubricated. One hot day this summer, Illinois' Senator Everett Dirksen stopped in to talk to Majority Leader Bill Knowland. Dirksen said he was thirsty, although Knowland had not asked him. Bill Knowland went to his icebox, found the ice trays frozen in from long disuse, began hacking at them with a letter opener. With characteristic single-mindedness, Knowland turned down his aides' suggestion that they get some ice from the Senate restaurant, and ignored Dirksen's pleas to forget it. Fifteen minutes later, Knowland had his ice.

The Senate is as intractable as Knowland's ice trays. Its rules are designed to humor the egos and the caprice of men who all regard themselves as national celebrities. In his difficult job, Knowland works with tireless energy, but in training himself for statesmanship, he had to bypass a tutelage in political finesse. He lacks Martin's knack for looking ahead, often neglects to count votes long enough in advance because of his preoccupation with a bill currently on the Senate floor.

Presence Denied. By contrast to Knowland's troubles with senatorial prima donnas and his relative lack of experience (nine years in the Senate), Joe Martin has been a Congressman for 29 years and commands great respect from the House's feudal barons, the committee chairmen. By his gift for teamwork, his influence over chairmen, his control of the traffic-regulating Rules Committee, and by the tightness of the House's rules, Joe Martin has kept his House in order.

It was not always so well ordered. In the last century filibusters were frequent, and minorities refused to vote, making action impossible for want of a quorum. Speaker Thomas Reed changed all that one wild day in 1890 by counting members present, although they sat mutely in their chairs when their names were called. Shouted a Kentuckian named McCreary, "I deny the right of the Speaker to count me present." "Czar" Reed shot back with devastating logic, "The Chair simply stated the fact that the gentleman from Kentucky appears to be present. Does he deny it?" With that, members bolted for the doors. Reed ordered the doors locked. Pandemonium gripped the House of Representatives as members hid under desks, shouted curses at Reed and beat down the doors. But Reed had his quorum, and he kept a tight control of the House.

The powers he amassed, particularly the Rules Committee chairmanship, were stripped from his successor, "Uncle Joe" Cannon, in the revolt of 1910. The speakership was whittled down almost to its purely procedural functions. Since then the Speaker's powers have been gradually increasing again, with Joe Martin's (and before him, Sam Rayburn's) subtle cloakroom tactics substituting for the brazen railroading of Czar Reed.

Pork Expended. Joe Martin was born 69 years ago in North Attleboro, Mass., across the street from the smithy where his father worked as long as 16 hours a day for $15 a week. Joseph Martin the elder was a Presbyterian of Scots descent; his wife, Catherine Katon Martin (now 93), an Irish Catholic. Some of their eight children were reared as Catholics, some as Presbyterians. Joe, the second child and eldest son, was one of the Presbyterians, but he belongs to no church now.

Joe played end on the Attleboro High School football team, and his snappy work at shortstop brought an offer of a scholarship to Dartmouth. Joe turned it down, decided instead to help out the family by reporting for the Attleboro Sun and playing semi-pro baseball for the town and local industrial teams.

At 24, he had saved $1,000. With it, and some more raised from fellow towns men, he bought the North Attleboro Evening Chronicle (circ. 4,000), which he still publishes. The next step was politics. He served three years in the Massachusetts house of representatives (and on a committee chairmaned by Calvin Coolidge), three years in the state senate. On the side, Joe paid for the Dartmouth education of two younger brothers, Ed and Al. He also bought an insurance agency, now run by a nephew. It has no salesmen because Joe does not want his constituents to think he is pressuring them.

In 1924 Martin ran for Congress in the Republican primary against the incumbent. Joe lost. However, before the general election, the Congressman died, and the local G.O.P. organization picked Joe to take his place. Joe was elected, and has been re-elected ever since.

The 14th District, which Joe Martin represents, covers parts of four counties in southeastern Massachusetts. Some of Joe's constituents work in textile, costume-jewelry and shoe-manufacturing plants, while others have dairy, poultry and truck farms. Joe lost interest in the pork barrel years ago, after he succeeded in getting a little river in his district dredged. "I thought it was great," he recalls, "until my opponent at the next election went around telling everyone that Joe Martin is a good Congressman, but he's such an expensive one."

Cheer Withheld. In 1938, when the Republican flock in the House had dwindled to a half-century low of 89, Joe Martin was their campaign chairman. He raised what money he could, spent it where it counted, and bettered his own prediction when 80 new Republicans were elected, almost doubling the flock. The next year he became minority leader.

The day of one of President Roosevelt's State of the Union messages, F.D.R., who had taken a liking to Joe, told him, "I've set a trap for you Republicans in this speech. Make sure you don't cheer in the wrong places." After the speech the President asked: "Well, Joe, did you cheer in the wrong places?" Replied Joe, "No, Mr. President, we didn't cheer at all." Roosevelt threw back his head, roaring with laughter.

In his long career Martin was probably most unhappy in 1940, when he managed the Willkie campaign, for he sensed during most of the campaign that he was fighting a lost cause. From 1940 to 1952, Martin presided over four Republican National Conventions, and at one of them, 1948, was a dark-horse candidate himself. At the 1952 convention, Martin claimed to be for MacArthur, by which he meant he was neutral.

At 50, Full-Grown. Still a bachelor, Joe Martin has never had a home of his own. On his visits to North Attleboro he stays in the eleven-room white frame house that he bought for his mother. Until he was past 50 he shared a room there with his brother Charlie. Finally, one day, he told Charlie they were grown men now and should have separate rooms. Charlie runs the business side of Joe's two newspapers (they bought a small weekly in 1945), while Brother Al edits them. Brother Ed is the New England manager for the Graybar Electric Co. and Brother George runs a filling station, with sidelines in firewood and maple syrup.

In Washington Speaker Martin has lived for years in a two-room Hay-Adams House suite, across Lafayette Square from the White House. He wears the same dark blue suit and the same dark tie for a week, along with his trademark, black, box-toed, ankle-high shoes. One night a week during the baseball season, plus an occasional Sunday afternoon, ex-Shortstop Martin likes to take in a game at Griffith Stadium, usually with his good friend and the Rules Committee Chair man, Illinois' Leo Allen. Joe roots for the Nationals, keeps an eye peeled for the Boston score to see how the Red Sox do. He is particularly critical of sloppy play around second base, and sometimes observes that a rookie is just like a freshman Congressman: "They both need proper seasoning."

At 12, a Cue. On days when the House is in session, Joe is driven in his official Cadillac to the House restaurant, where at 8:30 he breakfasts (cantaloupe, buttered whole-wheat toast, black coffee) and spends an hour holding informal court. Sometimes Sam Rayburn joins him. Then others troop up to schedule the day's activities or ask for favors. Rules Chairman Allen checks with him on bills to be cleared for floor action. Whip Les Arends warns that too many members are out of town to risk a close vote. Then come the requests. Would Joe ask Allen to clear a pet bill? Could Joe get a district classified as a drought disaster area? When Joe makes a speech in New York, would he spend a few minutes with visiting schoolchildren from upstate?

At 9:30 Speaker Martin goes to his personal office to read the newspapers, dictate letters and receive more callers. Then, at 11, he moves to the heroic mahogany desk under a crystal chandelier in the ornate Speaker's Suite. There he keeps his formal appointments with Cabinet members or visiting VIPs. Each day, a few minutes remain for newsmen to swarm into the room and fire a quick volley of questions. Joe's answers are terse, to the point and, except when he needs a big news play to help swing a tight vote, off the record. Suddenly a youthful page's voice squeaks, "One minute, Mr. Speaker."

That is Joe's cue. He brushes through the band of reporters, walks over to the House floor to convene the day's session promptly at noon. Joe presides during the routine business of referring bills to committee and putting speeches in the Congressional Record. When the day's debate begins, the House "resolves" itself into a "Committee of the Whole." At that point the Speaker turns over his gavel to the day's chairman and goes to lunch.

Lunch is often a sandwich and piece of pie at the cloakroom snack bar. The rest of the afternoon, Speaker Martin stays close to the House floor, constantly feeling the political pulse of its members.

Before dinner Speaker Martin stops in at one or two official or semi-official cocktail parties, at each one puts a glass in his hand, lifts it to his lips, but drinks not a drop. (He just doesn't like the stuff, or tobacco.) If there is a formal dinner party, Joe may stay as late as 10:30, rarely later. Otherwise, he dines at the hotel, and by 9:30 he is in bed.

The Wisdom of Silence. This summer, when Congress has adjourned, Speaker Martin will slip off to the family bungalow at Cape Cod's Sagamore Beach. There he will take dips in the bay and look out from the veranda toward the Pilgrims' Monument at Provincetown. He will be thinking about the coming election, planning a speaking tour or two and receiving a constant stream of political big-and little-wigs. Does Joe Martin think he will still be Speaker of the House after November's election? Where does he think the Republicans will win seats? Says he, "You don't tell the world where you find your huckleberries, if you've got any sense."

* Other recent Martinisms: once, when Sam Rayburn addressed the Chair, Martin declared: "The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Rayburn, Mr. Texas." In a foreign-policy speech to the House, Martin made a ringing demand for the restoration of sovereignty to West Virginia. (He meant West Germany.)

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