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Show SENATE MONSTROSITY WASHINGTON. Seldom has a senate committee been so loath to put its name to a piece of legislation legisla-tion as the senate banking and currency cur-rency committee which finished sabotaging the price control bill recently. About all that was left of the bill was its name. When it came to signing it, New York's Senator Wagner, chairman of the banking and currency committee, com-mittee, flatly refused. He pointed out, in a closed-door session, that he had opposed the emasculating amendments and would submit his own minority report. Senator Taft, who did more than almost anyone to tear the bill to pieces, also hesitated. He said he had his own bill which he wanted to introduce. Finally someone proposed that the senators' names be signed in a circle, cir-cle, so the public could not tell who signed first. "It reminds me," said Kentucky's Ken-tucky's Alben Barkley, "of the young man who shot his mother and father, then appealed to the court for leniency on the grounds that he was an orphan." or-phan." NOTE Finally, Senator Barkley agreed to report the gutted OPA bill to the senate, but accompanied by a stinging criticism of the way the OPA had been virtually destroyed. de-stroyed. PATIENT LAUNDRY LEW Secretary of Labor "Laundry Lew" Schwellenbach is a patient man. He learned the virtue of patience pa-tience as a Spokane laundryman when he had to handle customers' complaints about frayed collars arid lost shirts. Patient as he is, Lew has had a tough time with his boss in the White House during the maritime mari-time strike negotiations. Shortly after the talks began, Schwellenbach called on the 1 unions, the shipping people, and government officials to say nothing which would arouse feelings and imperil the negotiations. negotia-tions. The very next morning, however, Lew's boss in the White House did exactly the opposite op-posite by announcing plans to use the navy to break the strike. This, of course, put the ship owners in a favored position. They were no jonger under any compulsion to settle before the strike deadline. . When patient " Laundry Lew heard this, even he hit the ceiling. Then the ' navy announced, with White House backing, that it was calling on its reserves and volunteers volun-teers to break the strike. Again this played into the ship owners' hands; again the secretary of labor was upset. Finally, he sent Assistant Sec. of Labor John Gibson to the White House with a personal appeal to the President to refrain from prejudicing prejudic-ing the negotiations. Truman agreed, issued a statement saying the government hoped for settlement, settle-ment, did not want to be put in the position of breaking the strike. CABINET CONFIRMATIONS American history shows that Presidents of the United States have had more difficulty wih senate confirmation con-firmation of the secretary of the treasury than any other cabinet post. In all, 10 different votes have been cast by the senate defeating defeat-ing confirmation of cabinet members. mem-bers. The first of these was Andrew Jackson's fight to appoint Roger B. Taney as secretary of the treasury. Jackson was defeated. Second senate battle was President Presi-dent Tyler's attempt to appoint Caleb Cushing as secretary of the treasury. Tyler forced three different differ-ent votes in the senate to confirm Cushing, but lost each time by large majorities. Tyler also had trouble appointing David Henshaw as secretary sec-retary of the navy, and James M. Porter as secretary of war. The next senate fight over cabinet cabi-net confirmation occurred in the administration ad-ministration of Andrew Johnson, when he attempted to appoint Henry Stanbery as attorney general, gen-eral, but was defeated. Calvin Coolidge also lost a fight to appoint Charles B. Warren as attorney at-torney general. The first vote on Warren 'was the famous occasion when Vice Pres. Charley Dawes failed to be present. His excuse was that he was napping and his alarm clock failed to go off. However, Coolidge, who never got along with Dawes, always suspected that his vice president wanted to avoid being put on the spot by a tie vote, which he, as presiding pre-siding officer, would have had to break. CAPITAL CHAFF Six-foot, eight-inch high governor-elect governor-elect Jim Fplsom of Alabama is going go-ing to be a political force to be reckoned with. He has six months to plan his strategy before taking office, and one move he will make is to spend one month in Atlanta as 'a guest of Georgia's hard hit- ting Gov. Ellis Arnall. Folsom will study Arnall's liberal administration adminis-tration from A to Z in order to profit from his experience. . . . Folsom was a leading Henry Wallace delegate dele-gate at the 1944 convention. |