THE CONGRESS: Boomerang & Blackjack

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"We'll see whether I'm a liar or not.'' shot back Tom Corcoran as Chairman O'Connor pounded his gavel, hastily adjourned the session.

Next morning sturdy, self-possessed Dr. Gruening took the witness chair, confirmed Tom Corcoran's story to the last detail.

Headline Hunger. Having observed Colleague Brewster's disastrous boomerang, no other Congressman seemed anxious to try a shot at the White House. Chair-man O'Connor, flush with $50,000 voted him by the House and gratified by the headlines his investigation was making, announced that he would now turn his attention to the Power lobby. But just when prospects seemed bright for more & bigger headlines the Senate suddenly elbowed John J. O'Connor out of the spotlight.

Alabama's slim, wide-eyed Senator Hugo La Fayette Black got a taste of the joys of inquisition in the Senate ocean & airmail investigations (TIME, Oct. 9, 1933, et scq.). Hungry for more, he seized last week upon the Power furor, got the Senate to vote him $50,000 and authority for his committee to investigate not only the Utility Bill lobbying but also "all efforts to influence, encourage, promote or retard . . . any other matter or proposal affecting legislation." Thus New Dealer Black was armed with a mighty blackjack which he could swing at will on anyone who dared oppose Administration bills. For the moment, however, his strategy was to turn up a first-rate Power lobby scandal which might move House-Senate conferees to reinstate the Utility Bill's "death sentence."

Gadsden Purchase? Chief of the Power lobby, as chairman of the Committee of Public Utility Executives, is Philip Henry Gadsden. small, spry, silver-haired vice president in charge of public relations of Philadelphia's United Gas Improvement Co. and scion of a distinguished Charleston, S. C. family. Morning after the Black lobby committee was created last week, two of its investigators burst into Lobbyist Gadsden's offices at the Mayflower Hotel, without ceremony hustled him off in a taxicab to the Capitol. There Chairman Black had just summoned his committee to consider policy & procedure. Policy & procedure were settled in a trice. Five minutes after Lobbyist Gadsden appeared, the doors of the committee room were flung open and Chairman Black cried jovially: "Tell the boys of the Press to come in. The show is about to begin."