A Rising Wind
April 7, 1944. Eastland, his round face beaming blandly and his figure drooped in its perpetual slouch, says happily that he and his buddies from the great Southland are all jest as busy as bees durin’ recess, preparin’ no less than a thousan’ amendments to the anti-poll-tax bill. First off, Jim says, there are going to have to be 48 amendments to take care of some of the peculiar No’then state laws. After that, there’s a good many other things have to be tended to. The whole thing is perfectly barefaced and candid. Since each of the amendments will have to be printed, to the extent of some 1000 copies each, it is also going to run into quite a little money before the fun is over.
Where there is so much smoke, however, there is bound to be fire. Apparently the recurring cautious hints we have been getting about the bill are correct: a definite date—the week of April 24—is even beginning to be bruited about. Despite the Democrats’ own need for party harmony, which this issue will of course blow sky-high in a South already profoundly upset, and despite the knowledge that to raise the issue this year will be to throw the Senate deliberately into a deadlock in the midst of the invasion months, the measure’s sponsors are evidently going to bring it up. Their idealism cannot be criticized, although their sense of timing is appalling. The reputation of Congress is in for a new decline, this one self-imposed.
During the debate we shall hear two basic fallacies reiterated over and over again. The first will be offered by the anti-poll-tax forces, who will say that the bill is Constitutional; it is not, because it would set aside control of voting qualifications specifically vested in the states. The second will be offered by the Southerners, who will say that the poll tax is humanly and morally defensible; it is not. If everybody would just admit those two things on the first day, there might not be any filibuster at all. There would certainly be no debate. There would just be a vote.
Barkley is going to try to get cloture after a day or two of debate, and is apparently picking up a lot of support on the Republican side. If he can hold his New Dealers and middle-of-the-roaders together on the Democratic side, he may be able to get the limitation. It takes a two-thirds vote, and if he gets it, he indicates, the move then will be to drop the bill and immediately introduce and pass a constitutional amendment that would, if ratified by three-fourths of them, be binding upon the states.
April 8, 1944. A certain Republican Senator, whose delight in intrigue can only be termed irresponsible when it is not downright vicious, has confided to the press that “a definite change” has occurred in the Truman Committee’s reports of late. “Haven’t you noticed it?” he asks innocently, and people who would never read into the committee’s findings anything but the sober constructive criticisms they are begin to get upset and look at them cross-eyed. He’s a smooth worker, this fellow, and I shall always remember one day in the Senate when he gave a most reasonable speech on a vital topic. “That would be a fine speech,” one of the press remarked, “if that man only had a principle.” Unfortunately he hasn’t; on that we are all agreed.
His latest little campaign is complete with an inside story. It seems that Harry Truman got called down to the White House, he says, and from on high there were dangled before him two good jobs, the Vice-Presidency and the Secretaryship of War. Either would satisfy an honest man’s ambitions, and in the case of one, at least, providing Roosevelt is re-elected and is overtaken by his frailties, the offer might far exceed the recipient’s wildest dreams. But there was a price, our informant tells us, and the price was that the Truman Committee soft-pedal the criticisms and lay on with the trowel. This information, he says, has come to him from Republican sources on the committee and also from the Army, which of course has always gotten along beautifully with Truman and would certainly have no reason to smear him—much. Look into it, he urges the press; and being conscientious, and during recess hard up for a story, some of us undoubtedly will. In all likelihood the end result will be just what he wants it to be—a considerable shadow thrown upon the work of one of the finest and most constructive committees Congress has ever known.
If the facts alone could refute such a story, then it might be shown up for what it is. Unfortunately they will not be sufficient. This Senator, clever, cynical, and as far as anyone can see almost entirely unprincipled, knows perfectly well the intangible weapon with which he deals: suspicion. That’s all he needs: implant it, and let nature take its course. The result is not hard to imagine or predict.
Most of us in the press prefer to consider Harry Truman an honest man who, whatever he may have been offered—and that part of the story is not too fantastic—would never permit his personal ambitions to hamper the work of his committee. Even if he weren’t that sort of man, the committee’s work would be its own protection. Honesty has just been too profitable where the Truman Committee is concerned. It has paid too-big dividends in fame and reputation and constructive results. Any man who would throw that away would be a fool indeed, and Harry Truman is not a fool. In addition to which, anyone who can read the latest committee reports objectively and without succumbing to the careful suspicions of the aforementioned Senator can see for himself that the story is without foundation. But it will grow, for all of that, in the frenetic atmosphere of the Hill, and someday not far off it will seriously hamper, if it does not altogether terminate, the fine activities of the Truman Committee.
April 10, 1944. Hull, sounding a little less pious and a little more practical, made another of the State Department’s stop-heckling-us-you-know-we’re-noble speeches last night, touching at some length upon the situation in France and thereby confusing even more a picture which the President rendered reasonably obscure at his press conference Friday. At that time the Executive said no one could say what government France wanted, and that consequently the United States certainly wasn’t going to get any too chummy with De Gaulle. Hull remarked calmly that the United States would certainly permit the Committee of Liberation and its leaders to supervise the restoration of civil government in the country.
Hull’s invitation to Congress to name a committee to consult with him on foreign policy was received with some interest on the Hill. But looked at in the larger perspective, what does it matter how many committees you tell your secrets secretly to? It is not eight men in the Congress, or 96, or even 535 who will ratify or reject your foreign policy for you, in the last analysis. It is the 135,000,000 people out in the country.
April 11, 1944. The names of the two overlords of Washington’s most confused situation—manpower—are sufficient by themselves to provoke most people on the Hill to near apoplexy these days. “General Hershey4 made a speech the other day—” I began to one Senator. “He makes too God-damned many speeches,” he replied promptly. “Maybe if he didn’t make so many we might get somewhere.” “Hershey and McNutt!”5 snorted another in great disgust. “Of all the mismanaged, stupid, inefficient, incompetent—They couldn’t have done any better job of tying it up in knots if they’d tried.” Another Senator suggested that Hershey be given the boot and then commented philosophically on the way people get a little power and then try to run everything. It is only a matter of time before somebody threatens to put in a resolution authorizing an investigation.
Out of the day I put in on this story—it began as a story about the reaction to one of General Hershey’s speeches suggesting that servicemen be retained in service until they have jobs waiting for them—I got several interesting comments, and one rather interesting dissertation, from a shrewd and dissident Democrat, on the political future. Elbert Thomas, as nice and fatherly as he could be and if anything more gently idealistic than ever, seemed a little disturbed by my ventured pessimism concerning the situation which will arise when 11,000,000 men decide they want to come home and their folks decide they want them to. He tried at some length to talk me out of it. The transition back, he said, will be gradual. Men will be subject to the needs of their units, just as they are now—some will be held for a while in armies of occupation, others will be released—it will be a gradual changeover. I was impressed again, as I have so often been before, with his innocent, simple and profound confidence in the country and the future. The Senator is a truly Christian gentleman, combining infinite idealism with a faith in America almost childlike in its simple acceptance. It is a collection of qualities enlightening to behold and conducive to considerable respect, if not always agreement.
My friend the dissident Democrat came forth with the following items:
1. David Niles, one of the President’s administrative assistants (the Hill refers to him as “Devious Dave”), came up a little while ago and told Burt Wheeler flatly that Roosevelt won’t run again.
2. The palace guard is “scared to death of Harry Byrd—of any potential third-party movements.”
3. Dewey will win.
As for the first item, “I told Burt, ‘Why, hell, Burt, you know why they did that, don’t you? Because they want to head you off and block any third-party movement. All this talk about ill health and so on—that’s just to quiet people like you down, so that they can come right up to convention and then put over a draft on us. Don’t be a sucker for that stuff.’”
As for the second, “They’re scared to death of Harry Byrd down there—oh, they’re scared to death of him! This is going to get right down to cases. There aren’t going to be any votes to spare in the Electoral College. If Byrd organizes a Southern Democratic Party it seems pretty likely that he’ll carry Virginia and probably South and North Carolina. Even if he only took those three states—and it’s quite possible with all the discontent in the South that he might take more—it would ruin Franklin right there. Harry’ll do almost anything—almost anything—to stop a fourth term.”
And as for the third, “I don’t like Dewey. I don’t like the way he treats bellhops and porters and waiters—the little people who wait on him. That’s a good indication of the kind of damned snooty guy you’ve got on your hands. But he has an excellent radio presence, he makes an excellent speech, and he’d probably do a pretty good job of it as President. I think he can beat Roosevelt all right.”
All of which may be election-year woolgathering—all but the message to Wheeler. That is apparently authentic.
April 12, 1944. The V.P., as he is customarily referred to here, today did something only he would do—he welcomed seven South American baseball players to his office just off the Senate floor and posed with them amiably for the photographers, chatting with them in Spanish. It was my first occasion to observe the V.P. at close hand, and after doing so my only comment is the same one everybody makes—the amused, rather frustrated laugh, the baffled shake of the head, the inability to put into exact words the combination of feelings he arouses. The man’s integrity and his idealism and his sainted other-worldliness are never in question: it’s just the problem of translating them into everyday language and making them jibe with his shy, embarrassed, uncomfortable good-fellowship that is so difficult. Henry Wallace is a man foredoomed by fate. No matter what he does, it is always going to seem faintly ridiculous, and no matter how he acts, it is always going to seem faintly pathetic—at least to the cold-eyed judgments of the Hill. It is something indefinable but omnipresent.
He has a shy way of looking at you, ducking his head way down and peering out from under his eyebrows. “Ah, shucks, fellas,” you expect him to say momentarily. With it there is a quick laugh—too quick, perhaps, and too frequent: “Whuh-whuh-whuh-whuh-whuh!” A certain tenseness never quite leaves his lips, and the lines around his eyes are uneasy and set from the strain of a public joviality he was never made for and would probably give anything to avoid. A shock of silver-graying hair sweeps over to the right of his head in a great shaggy arc. He looks like a hayseed, talks like a prophet, and acts like an embarrassed schoolboy.
For all that, he is in his way an excellent man, morally good and mentally idealistic, and no doubt worth much to his country. If it had been given to him to express it in some other context he would have been far happier, and so would the country. As it is, exposed to the pitiless glare of the Washington spotlight, surrounded always by eyes which can never forget that he stands separated from power by the tenuous barrier of one human heart, it is perhaps inevitable that he should have become what he is, a butt of scorn and many cruel jokes.
The seven South American ballplayers, however, seemed too awed to be in the mood for such philosophizing. The V.P. spoke to them in excellent Spanish, quick and fluent, seemingly far more at ease in their tongue than his own. What did they call first base, he asked them, rapidly sketching a diamond on a piece of paper. Second base? Third base? What did they call shortstop? The press, on the whole less literate and numbering few bilinguals, stood around in amused silence while this went on. “Let’s have the pictures, damn it,” some photographer murmured; and after a moment, in the midst of a line of huge young Latin Americans dressed fit to kill and eyeing him with polite but thawing awe, the V.P. obliged.
Ten minutes later press and Latins had scattered and from his seat in the chamber Henry Wallace was opening the session of the United States Senate while the tourists ohed and ahed and pointed him out to one another.
The Senate met for 13 minutes. The only thing of note was the fact that Eastland, looking happy, was sitting next to Bushfield on the Republican side. Bushfield and Bridges have both announced that they will not vote to impose cloture on the poll-tax debate. It would be establishing a bad precedent, Bushfield says; it isn’t a measure of sufficient importance, Bridges avers. Eastland looks awfully pleased.
APRIL 13, 1944. The Senate met again today—nine minutes this time—and Maybank seized the occasion to read a brief statement to the effect that the South, “regardless of what decisions the Supreme Court may make and regardless of what laws Congress may pass,” will handle the Negro as it sees fit. The problem of translating this into practical action, or the ultimate implications of such action, is apparently something which never occurred to him, any more than it has occurred to his Southern colleagues or their people back home. A second Civil War is unthinkable, but there are times when the South comes awfully close to openly advocating one. From time to time there flits across the mind a certain disturbed curiosity as to just what would happen if the anti-poll-tax bill should actually pass. Of course it would be accepted in the South—or would it? Would all be sweetness and light below the Potomac or would there be local insurrections culminating in official state repudiation of the national government? Sometimes, for all our twentieth-century enlightenment, one cannot help but wonder.
April 14, 1944. Aiken remarked today—knocking on wood—that so far he has no opposition for re-election from the Democrats; or—knocking on wood again—from the Republicans either. Reports drifting back to the Hill indicate that others are not so fortunate.
Betting so far on the Republicans’ chances of taking the Senate this time is very cautious on the Hill. It is pretty generally conceded that they will take the Indiana seat, probably the Iowa, possibly the Illinois and Idaho, possibly the California, perhaps Missouri, possibly Washington. Given those, their total would be 44, still 5 short of the necessary 49.
April 15, 1944. Congressman A.L. Miller of Nebraska has released correspondence with MacArthur which discloses the general to be more than a little interested in the Republican nomination and in all probability reduces even further the remote likelihood of his getting it. “That’s about what you can expect from these first-term Congressmen,” the old-timers remark sagely. Everybody has picked it up and given it a whirl and it has turned into rather more of a sensation that the Congressman probably expected. MacArthur has not been heard from yet.
Vandenberg, faced with the blow-up of his carefully nurtured candidate, has concealed his chagrin, if any, behind a cloak of silence. This has not been hard for him to do, because he rarely says anything anyway, but it has furnished the press with a little more exercise in devising ways to approach the sage of Michigan. This is a never-ending game in which we all indulge with relatively poor success. When I went in to see him on this particular matter—did he have any comment to make on the MacArthur-Miller correspondence?—he turned away rudely and barked out in his heavy, emphatic voice: “Not a word—now or ever.” Others, I found, had had the same experience: we compared notes in some frustration. The episode was a vivid reminder of a recent conversation between a couple of my colleagues. “Shall we go and see Vandenberg?” one asked. “Let’s,” said the other agreeably. “I haven’t given him a chance to sneer at me for three weeks.” “He’ll be glad to see you, then,” said the first. “It’ll give him the opportunity.” Much as the great Arthur annoys us, however, we can’t help liking him in a sort of exasperated way. And as for his ability as a Senator, it is deserving of the respect it gets from all of us.
April 17, 1944. The Senate met today for an hour or so while Tunnell talked about the poultry situation in Delaware, and then went over until tomorrow, when it will again go over to Friday. At that time minor legislative matters will be disposed of and the decks will be cleared. On Monday, unless some unforeseen circumstance arises, with OPA, the Navy appropriations bill, and reconversion all hanging fire, Jim Mead will call up H.R. 7 and the poll-tax fight will be on.
He said today that his forces head into battle somewhat stronger than they were a year and a half ago when the bill was killed by filibuster, but still not strong enough so that they can count with certainty upon success. A filibuster, he added, will have one of two results. Either it will force the Southerners, through an aroused public opinion—something they are quite impervious to—to abandon their stand and give in; or it will force the anti-poll-tax forces, through the same aroused opinion—which they are more amenable to—to abandon their stand and give in. He is not entirely certain, Mead said, which will occur, but as a matter of practical fact few people in the Senate are under any illusions. The anti-poll-tax forces are deliberately provoking a filibuster they know they cannot win. As time runs out and the event draws closer upon us, their reasons for doing so become increasingly obscure. The bad effect on the reputation of the Senate, the perhaps-disastrous effect upon the Democratic Party, the possible hindrance of the war and the memories of wasted time and ignominious argument that may someday come back to plague them at the polls—none of these apparently weighs in the balance against the reasons which to them seem sufficient. On the basis of hard, practical what-can-be-done-and-what-can’t-be-done, however, it is a logic difficult to follow.
Of the effects upon the South, a Southerner told me today with reasoned emphasis and considerable concern. “When you hear Maybank get up and say, ‘We shall do as we please regardless of any laws Congress may pass or any decisions the Supreme Court may hand down,’ mark my words he is not joking; the South isn’t joking any more. They mean these things. It isn’t just this one issue here or that one issue there, but a whole accumulation of things, gradual pressures which are getting to the point where they may someday—someday not too far off—come to a boil. You see the lengths they are going to already in South Carolina, calling a special session of their legislature and abolishing all their primary laws, using every possible dodge to avoid registering Negroes. Back them into the corner a little further and see what they do. Or put all their discontent and unrest against the background of the postwar readjustment with all its stresses and strains and see the picture you get. No, don’t make any mistake about it: you can take these things they say at face value, of that I am absolutely positive. The South isn’t joking any more.”
Thus succinctly a Southerner summed up a whole series of impressions, some of them small and insignificant, some of them larger and not so insignificant, which I have received since being here. We seem to be perched on a cliff, in Washington, above a vast and tumbled plain that stretches far away below us: the South, unhappy, restless, confused, embittered, torn by pressures steadily mounting. As far as the eye can see there is discontent and bitterness, faint intimations of a coming storm like a rising wind moving through tall grass; a storm which need not come, which indeed may never come, but a storm whose peaceful passage will be a miracle more of Providential grace than man’s planning.
In such a mood I like to buy copies of certain New York journals and depart with them into their own particular Nirvana. There, all is rules and theories, and the human problems of human people struggling bravely and pathetically and confusedly with the terrible forces loose in their world are forgotten in the glib, easy, irresponsible convention of telling others how to live. It is so simple, up there—it is a cliff even above ours. Managing the South, after all, is very easy to do when you are far away and snug and safe, and feel yourself, however inaccurately, free from any compulsion to exercise the tolerance you preach so intolerantly, or act with the responsibility you clamor for so irresponsibly.
“Make no mistake: the South is not joking any more.…”
I live on the edge of it now, and I am beginning to believe it.
4 General Lewis B. Hershey, Director of Selective Service.
5 Paul V. McNutt, Director of the War Manpower Commission.