National Affairs: 59 Minutes

"Well Alben, you told me to do it and, by George, I did it."

These jubilant words were spoken last week by Vice President John Nance Garner to the Senate's Democratic Leader Alben Barkley. What the Vice President had just done was to end, in one minute less than an hour, the bitter Senate wrangle that had tied up U. S. legislation for the last six months. Using the steamroller tactics that he learned as Speaker of the House, Vice President Garner had with an historic gesture put the modified Court Bill through the U. S. Senate without a dissenting vote.

The Senate had convened that day in a state of sheer hot-weather weariness that the passage of the Housing Bill (see p. 10) the day before had not done much to help. One fair indication of the Senate's state of mind was that, in a rush of minor bills on which there was no debate, it had approved one, to give merchant seamen whose certificates are suspended the right to appeal to the Secretary of Commerce, which had already been enacted. An even better indication was that, after the non-controversial bills were passed, only about 20 members were on the floor when Nevada's Patrick A. McCarran stood up to introduce the modest Court Bill that was the ghost of Franklin Roosevelt's high-flown plan to enlarge the Supreme Court. Senator McCarran was followed on the floor by Vermont's Austin and then by Illinois' Lewis who attacked the Bill. While Lewis spoke, Vice President Garner and Leader Barkley were conducting a, tour of the Chamber, stopping to chat with colleagues who wanted to amend the Bill or make long comments on it. Senator Lewis ended his speech with a challenge to the Bill's sponsor. When McCarran rose to reply, the Vice President, by this time back at his seat, cut him short by snapping out:

"Are there amendments? . . ."

"Yes," shot back Senator McCarran, stopping his speech to pick up some papers from his desk and send them to the reading clerk.

Drafted after the collapse of the Court Plan three weeks ago (TIME, Aug. 2), and added as an amendment to a bill previously passed by the House, last week's Court Bill has four main provisions. It enables the Attorney General to intervene in lower-court constitutional cases, provides for speeding such cases to the Supreme Court, permits the temporary reassignment of Federal district judges, limits lower-court injunctive power by requiring decisions from a three-judge tribunal. Senator McCarran had not one amendment to propose but four, each brief and each designed to make the intervention of the Attorney General mandatory. As the four were read the Vice President pounded his ivory gavel on his desk as though it had been on a tom-tom, shouting: "Without objection the amendment is agreed to. . . Without objection the amendment is agreed to. . . ."

By this time the Senate was prepared for something but hardly for what happened next. Without interrupting the rhythm of his gavel, or pausing to let the Senate guess what he had in mind, the Vice President shouted "Without objection the Bill as amended is passed." Under the rules one shout of "I object" could have stopped him — for one is enough to prevent unanimous consent — but none of the surprised Senators had just those words on the tip of his tongue.