CALIFORNIA: Olson's Luck

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On view on four sides of the U. S. last week were three freshmen Governors and one postgraduate, all engaged in bitter-end battles with their Legislatures. Texas' Wilbert Lee ("Pass the Biscuits") O'Daniel, having surprisingly turned into a sincere if nai've executive who could get nowhere against professional obstructors, sent his Legislature home from Austin with a near-zero record. Wisconsin's ludicrous Julius ("The Just") Heil in Madison was entangled in his own bumblings and the snares of Republican legislators who connived to load him with all the blame for their sorry record, adjourn with the least possible damage to their party. New York's Democrat Herbert Lehman recalled his Legislature to Albany to repair a budget which a Republican majority had unconstitutionally cut. But the unhappiest, unluckiest Governor of 1939 was California's Democrat Culbert Levy Olson.

Four days after his inauguration he collapsed, discovered that he had an ailing heart. His wife died. His son and secretary, Richard, sadly embarrassed him by talking too much and out of turn. And midway of his first Legislature in Sacramento, Culbert Olson had learned enough to moan that the Laborites and assorted liberals who concerted to elect him had made a disastrous mistake. They let Republican conservatives retain control in the Senate, Democratic conservatives in the lower Assembly. Before it adjourned last week after the longest (133 days) biennial session in California history, California's Legislature:

> Hacked Governor Olson's two-year budget (including $50,000,000 to make up a left-over Republican deficit) from a record $557,000,000 to $468,000,000.

> Pared a separate two-year Relief appropriation from $73,000,000 to $35,500,000, loading it with amendments to make sure that Relief does not interfere with the supply of low-wage farm hands.

> Voted down Culbert Olson's cherished compulsory health-insurance-for-all (TIME, May 22).

> Despite the personal support (by telegram and telephone) of Franklin Roosevelt, Jim Farley, Harold Ickes, rejected a proposal to develop and distribute public power from mighty Shasta Dam in the Central Valley.

> Declined to up income, bank and corporation taxes, vote a State wages & hours bill, reform the antiquated State prison system, regulate professional lobbyists.

In administrative fields where the Legislature could not hamstring him, Culbert Olson did what he promised, started a cleanup of workmen's compensation administration, building & loan scandals, other dung-heaps in the backyard which he had inherited from old Frank Merriam. To the $30-Every-Thursday Ham-&-Eggers who helped install him, he promised a special election to give their pension plan a chance this fall, talked of tacking to it a proposal to recall the legislators who wrecked his program. Culbert Olson hoped to be to California what he thinks

Franklin Roosevelt has been to the U. S. Thanks to his Legislature and the lack of any great popular upsurge in his behalf, highlight of his career to date is his pardoning of Tom Mooney.