THE CONGRESS: THE CONGRESS Bank Bill

Bank Bill

Called into special session on four days notice, the 73rd Congress, young and Democratic, sat momentously in the Capitol last week. President Roosevelt had summoned it to meet the banking crisis—Emergency Item No. 1 of the New Deal. Not since War days had the Congressional temper been so grave, so unanimously bent on speedy action. The State of the Union was so serious that the most opinionated Senators and Representatives submerged their convictions in worried silence and took orders from the White House. Other Congresses had gabbled away opportunities to rescue the country but the 73rd, with a record to make, gave a legislative performance which for dispatch, efficiency and good behavior during the first week's session, placed it high in public esteem.

Though the spirit of Congress was new, its mechanics were as old as the U. S. Proceedings began in the House with the election of Illinois' white-thatched Henry Thomas Rainey to the Speakership as a result of last fortnight's Tennessee-Texas-Tammany deal in the Democratic caucus. He got 302 votes to the 110 cast for his Republican opponent, New York's Snell&3151;an immediate demonstration of the Democrats' margin of House control.

Ignoring precedent, a spectator in the gallery when the House convened was Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt, bareheaded, knitting a sweater. When members spotted the First Lady, they rose and clapped. Mrs. Roosevelt responded by standing, nodding, smiling pleasantly, and like Mme Defarge in the French Revolution resuming her knitting. With her in the Presidential box were her son James, Mrs. Henry Morgenthau Jr.. Mrs. Mary Howe Baker, daughter of Roosevelt Secretary-Crony Louis McHenry Howe, and Miss Nancy Cook, Mrs. Roosevelt's partner in the Val Kill furniture factory.

After Speaker Rainey had sworn in the membership with one thunderous oath* and the President's message had been read, the House plunged headlong into H. R. 1491, "an act to provide relief in the existing national emergency in banking." So hastily had the bill been drawn up that no printed copies of it were yet available for members. Their only knowledge of what they were being asked to approve came from a clerk's sing-song reading of the lone text which still bore last-minute corrections scribbled in pencil. Chairman Steagall of the yet unorganized Banking & Currency Committee arose to explain to his bewildered colleagues how H. R. 1491 gave dictatorial banking power to the President, authorized impounding of all gold, and provided for a new currency issue. Members were told that only by voting this measure could the nation's banks open on the morrow. Exalted by his subject, Representative Steagall exclaimed :

"It has taken 50 years to develop the great financial system of the U.S. which is now prostrate and in ruins. We cannot rebuild it in a day or a week. We can only do it step by step.

Heaven is not reached at a single bound;

But we build the ladder by which we rise

From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies

And we mount to its summit round by round.