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Show THE WASHINGTON SCENE Political Influence in House Centered in Two Regions Bv WALTER A. SHEAD Vlr in th. house 3 formed underthejctThese WNU Washington (Editor's Note: This is the fourth congressional committees and their chat - WASHINGTON. Political ; sentatives, following the same tered largely in the northeaste committee assignments under Michigan and New Jersey a of the 17 new house committee; two states garnered nine of the committees, Michigan getting five and New Jersey four. Kansas and New York each secured two committee com-mittee chairmanships, the others going to California, Illinois, Massachusetts Massa-chusetts and Minnesota. Joseph Martin, house speaker, also comes from Massachusetts and Charles Halleck, majority leader, is from Indiana. In-diana. Only one chairmanship went to states west of Kansas, namely Richard Rich-ard J. Welch of California, who is regarded as a political independent as a result of being nominated on both Republican and Democratic tickets for several years. The list of new house committees and their chairmen follows: Appropriations JOHN TABER (N. Y.), new chairman chair-man of the house appropriations committee, has pwjpBtW'ywi been one of the V most vocal advo-? advo-? cates of govern- mental economy. ,' A While he was the ' fX5'7 ' ranking minority rJ A member of the iJi- committee which t 1 he now heads, he fS f I consistently intro- ments to appropri-Taber appropri-Taber ations bills in an attempt to reduce federal expenditures. Always a foe of government "press agents," Taber recently recommended recommend-ed that all government information programs be cleaned out in the interest in-terest of "American liberty and freedom free-dom of the press." Taber, who automatically auto-matically becomes a member of the joint committee on the budget, has fought for a marked reduction in federal expenditures. He proposes for one thing to cut one million persons per-sons from the federal payroll. According to an analysis, of controversial con-troversial roll calls in 1946, Taber voted with the majority of his party 95 per cent of the time. He has an excellent attendance record, being absent for only one out of 130 roll call votes in 1946. Taber, who is 66, was born in Auburn, Au-burn, N. Y., where he still lives. After Aft-er graduating from Yale and the New York Law school, he practictMi law from 1904 until he was elected i to congress in 1922. The 38th district dis-trict in upstate New York, which he has represented since that time, has long been overwhelmingly Republican. Republi-can. A third of its population live on farms and the rest in small cities and towns. The Farm Bureau federation fed-eration and the National Grange are well organized. Labor is not politically po-litically significant. Education and Labor FRED A. HARTLEY JR. (N. J.), chairman of the new committee on education and labor, generally has followed Republican labor policy but sometimes has deserted his party on other issues. The new committee takes over the functions of the two old committees on education and on labor. Hartley was a member of the labor committee. commit-tee. The 10th New Jersey district, which Hartley represents, includes parts of Hudson and Essex counties '' and seven wards Ij? of the city of New- ' f t ark. In his pri- t ;$ mary campaign , i for renomination" last summer, Hart- ! ' J?1- V . , ley was opposed by . f the PAC on the . I 'basis of his fight I against OPA and , , was accused of be- " ' -ing a representa- Hartley tive of the manufacturing manu-facturing and retail lobbies. But he was renominated by a two-to-one margin and won in November. , Hartley, who is 44 years old, is the only living person after whom an aerie of the Fraternal Order of Eagles has been named. He was appointed to the Kearny, N. J., library li-brary commission in 1923 before he was old enough to vote and elected municipal commissioner in 1924 when he was 21 years old. The next year he was chairman of the Republican Re-publican county committee, and in 1928 he was elected to congress. The committee's general jurisdiction jurisdic-tion over education and labor bills includes the school-lunch program, which previously has been handled by the agriculture committee. Banking and Currency Assumption by JESSE P. WOL-COTT WOL-COTT (MICH.) of the chairmansmp of the powerful banking and curren-cy curren-cy committee heralds a violent sh, ft in orientation of that group. Wol-cott Wol-cott has been a consistent opponent, of government control of business He was the author of amendments to limit the power of OPA in both ses- sions of the 79th congress. In the , long house debate on the veterans j emergency housing program, he lea, the Republican fight against subsi-j dies and price ceilings on existing; homes. After the November elec- tions, he announced that investigation investiga-tion of the "outrageously bad" veterans' vet-erans' housing situation "must be the first order of business for the committee." Wolcott also is generally credited with helping to prevent a report by the committee on -sMte ' the Wagner-EUen- 7 ' der-Taft long- t I range housing bill - t 4 in the face of re- j peated requests for if- , action by the Pres- J. j(Jent Wolcott' s f? " ' t own 1946 houstag II t 1 bill provided some II V I government sup- M . jaisa port or homes for Wolcott middle and upper income groups and pointedly omitted public housing. In one field, foreign economic policy, pol-icy, Wolcott has generally supported the' administration. Considered the Republican monetary authority in the house, he was a delegate to the Bretton Woods conference and coauthor co-author with Brent Spence (Dem., Ky.) of legislation to implement it. Wolcott's district (7th Michigan) has been predominantly rural but during the war industrialization increased in-creased rapidly in the counties bordering bor-dering on the Detroit area and automobiles auto-mobiles and other iron and steel manufacturing now are becoming important. Wolcott, born in 1893, practiced law in Detroit before entering the army in World War I. After the war he settled in his present home town of Port Huron, where he served as police judge and subsequently as prosecuting attorney of St. Clair I county from 1921 until his election to congress in 1930. Besides its general jurisdiction over banking and currency, Wolcott's committee handles legislation on housing, price control and certain types of financial aid to business. Armed Services Under the legislative reorganization reorganiza-tion act, a single armed services committee replaces re-places the former rffs j house committees . J S j on military affairs ;T f i and naval affairs. i This is generally 7 rf J regarded as a j I 'boost for the jt .v"1 1 i army's legislative program, since f seniority gives the lc j M chairmanship of the new commit- Andrews tee to Water G. Andrews (N. Y.), for years the ranking rank-ing Republican on the military affairs af-fairs committee. Andrews is reported report-ed as favoring universal military training, which is No. 2 on the army's program. On the No. 1 item-unification item-unification of the armed forces Andrews has taken no public stand. Analysis of controversial roll calls in 1946 shows that Andrews voted with the majority of his party four out of five times. However, he gave the administration more support than did former military affairs chairman, Andrew J. May (Dem., Ky.) on the controversial issue of drafting 18-year-olds, which May actively ac-tively opposed. Andrews introduced a bill in the last session to require nine months' enlisted service of all appointees to West Point. Fifty-seven years old, Andrews has a law degree from Princeton, where he was once football coach. He served with the AEF in France in World War I and was wounded in action. He is now a business man and director of Pratt and Lambert. Lam-bert. His district (42nd New York) includes part of Buffalo and the city of Tonawanda; it is usually Re. publican. Principal industries are iron and steel, chemicals and rail roading. Andrews has been in con-gress con-gress since 1931. |