The 73rd Congress: LEFT

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"It is now," a sapient observer has observed, "becoming liberal to be conservative." So far has the New Deal shifted the fulcrum of U. S. politics that the old dividing line between Democrats and Republicans is today supplanted by a new line, less regular but more real, between Left and Right, collectivist and individualist, "new socialist" and "old capitalist." In viewing the present Congress, especially the Senate, it is noteworthy that the new liberal complexion derives not only from President Roosevelt but from the old "insurgent" Republicans or Progressives with whom, the old Democratic minority used to work. Out of line with all parties for a lifetime, Nebraska's grey old Senator Norris, who finally slew the archaic lame duck session of Congress with the 20th Amendment, now finds the majority party in line with himself on public utilities and farm relief. Colorado's Costigan was for years the left-handed bad boy of the Tariff Commission. He will shortly behold his dream— a rationalized, selective tariff—walking and talking in & out of the White House. California's white-crested Johnson, who Bull-Moosed with another Roosevelt, found the New Deal sufficiently "progressive" to go out and stump for it in 1932. Louisiana's rowdy Long is, of course, merely the loudest noise on the Left, going further than any one as is his wont. He wants, for example, a capital levy.