Birth of the 84th

The Democratic 84th Congress sat down in Washington, polished off its major organizational problems, vowed unflagging good will toward one and all,* and started elbowing for position in 1956.

Democrats and Republicans alike began the week with caucuses to select party leaders. Texas' Lyndon Johnson described the Democratic Senate meeting as all milk and honey, while Colorado's Eugene Millikin said of the G.O.P. session: "There was not a single unharmonious feature." But there was some dissonance outside the caucus rooms of both parties.

After Xerxes: Alex. There had been talk among President Eisenhower's most faithful Senate followers about putting up a slate to contest the control of the G.O.P. old-liners. In this scheme, Connecticut's Senator Prescott Bush would have been drafted to run for minority leader against Incumbent Leader William Knowland. New Jersey's Senator H. Alexander Smith wrote letters to his party colleagues suggesting that a mighty good choice for Republican policy chairman would be Senator H. Alexander Smith.

Then he padded down the hall in search of the blessing of New Hampshire's Senator Styles Bridges, whose influence matches his seniority in the Senate G.O.P. club. Bridges set Smith straight. Said he: "Of course you are entitled to run for the job. Anyone can." Then Bridges sadly shook his head and added: "But it's too bad--I'm going after it, too." Alex Smith beat the hastiest retreat since Xerxes fled to the Hellespont.

One of those toying with the idea of an insurgent slate was Massachusetts' timorous Senator Leverett Saltonstall, who, as Republican whip, is the only real Eisenhower supporter to hold a Senate party post. In one brief telephone call, Styles Bridges handled Saltonstall. Bridges said simply: "Lev, you better forget this funny stuff or you won't be whip much longer." As of that moment, Saltonstall was a noncombatant.

By this time, the Eisenhower followers had come to realize that they would only get bloodied up if they made a fight, and the insurrection folded. Then Bill Knowland passed the word that he 1) would faithfully support the Administration at this session, and 2) therefore wished that Ikeman Frank Carlson would place him in nomination for minority leader. Taking Knowland at his word, Carlson made the nomination. The G.O.P. conference selected Knowland as minority leader, Styles Bridges as policy committee chairman, Eugene Millikin as caucus chairman, and Lev Saltonstall as whip--all without opposition. Still to be chosen was a replacement for Illinois' Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, who is stepping down as Republican Senate campaign committee chairman.

After Old Nick: Hubert. The night before the Democrats held their official caucus, 19 New-Fair Deal Senators, most of them in a mood to stir up trouble, met with New York's Herbert Lehman. Agenda: discussion of an anti-filibuster change in the Senate rules. A fight on this point would have set Northern and Southern Democrats at each other's throats at the very outset of the 1955 session. The man who killed the plan was Minnesota's Senator Hubert Humphrey, once the noisiest and most reckless of the South-baiters. Humphrey urged his friends to "abandon the devil theory of politics," i.e., to recognize their Southern colleagues as reasonable, constructive men rather than as fiends from the pit. Humphrey prevailed, and after that it was easy going for the Democrats. Next day Georgia's Senator Walter George, quoting Alexander Hamilton (a factionalist if ever there was one) on the dangers of factionalism, nominated Lyndon Johnson for majority leader. There was no opposition. Kentucky's Earle Clements was named assistant leader, Walter George was chosen to become the Senate's president pro tempore, and Missouri's Thomas C. Hennings Jr. was selected conference secretary.

The Senate chaplain's prayer--"Keep before us ever the undimmed goal of a better world cleansed of its want, its fetters and its agony"--began the 1955 session. There was all the traditional opening-day handshaking and backslapping, even among old political enemies (exception: Joe McCarthy and Arthur Watkins, at their adjacent desks, leaned away from each other almost to the point of toppling off their chairs). But missing, since the death last year of North Carolina's courtly Senator Clyde Hoey, were those traditional stylemarks of senatorial dignity, the cutaway coat and the wing collar. This year's fashions tended toward red neckties, as worn, in descending order of brilliance, by Walter George, Montana's Democratic Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney, Tennessee's Democratic Senator Estes Kefauver, and South Carolina's Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond.

After a Grandmother: Finnigin. Over on the House side, Republican Joe Martin was getting ready to hand the Speaker's gavel back to Democrat Sam Rayburn and then to step down to his familiar post as minority leader. From the opening-day scramble Rayburn took time out for an act of simple kindness. With his office full of Congressmen, job-seekers and admirers, Rayburn got an apologetic telephone call from Ohio's freshman Representative Thomas Ludlow Ashley. Ashley's 87-year-old grandmother was in Washington to see young (32) Lud sworn in. For more than 40 years Sam Rayburn had been one of her political heroes, and she wanted to meet him. Said Sam: "Delighted. Bring her down." He talked to the old lady for nearly half an hour. When the chat was over, Rayburn had won the unswerving loyalty of a new Congressman.

The Martin-Rayburn transfer of office had a familiar ring: they had changed places three times before. It reminded Martin of "an old ditty that went something like this: 'Off agin, on agin, gone agin, Finnigin.' "*

But there is plenty of serious business ahead for the Congress. The Senate has coming up before it treaties on German rearmament, Southeast Asian defense, and mutual defense with the Chinese Nationalists. Farm, power, military, labor, housing and foreign-aid policies will all come up for review--and each promises a fight. In the first hours of the Senate session, 166 measures were introduced, ranging from John Bricker's treaty amendment to a bill by Arizona's Republican Senator Barry Goldwater which would permit live scorpions to be sent through the mail for medical research.

More than 1,000 bills went into the House hopper on opening day. New York's Republican Representative Kenneth Keating alone introduced 45, of which he had tried to get 35 through the 83rd Congress. But the most significant thing that happened during the first week was that Speaker Rayburn designated as House Bill No. 1 a bill to carry out President Eisenhower's recommendations for a liberal foreign trade program. It is in this field that the 84th Congress has its best chance for a solid achievement.

*Martin took his text from the late Strickland Gillilan's Finnigin to Flannigan. It seems that Railroad Section Boss Finnigin was writing overlong accident reports to Superintendent Flannigan, who told him to cut them down. One day some cars left the tracks, but the train soon went on its way. Concluded the verse:

An' the shmoky ol' lamp wuz burnin' bright In Finnigin's shanty all that night-- Bilin' down his repoort, wuz Finnigin-- An' he writed this here: "Musther Flannigan: Off agin, on agin, Gone agin.--Finnigin."

*The fleeting friendliness reminded New York Timesman Arthur Krock of II Samuel 20:9-10, describing the meeting of Joab and Amasa at the great stone of Gibeon: "And Joab said to Amasa, Art thou in health, my brother? And Joab took Amasa by the beard with the right hand to kiss him. But Amasa took no heed to the sword that was in Joab's hand: so he [Joab] smote him therewith in the fifth rib . . ."

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