National Affairs: Harmony

• Share

Headline of last week in Washington was the Herald's:

HOUSE "HARMONY" BATTLE A DRAW

Reference was to a sudden caucus of House Democrats early last week, designed to sink differences and combat with united front the lethally effective tactics of Minority Leader Joe Martin in blocking or steering legislation. Leader Martin's tactics have been simplicity itself: to keep his little band (ratio: 2 to 3) together until the disunited Democrats divide on an issue, then plug home a solid bloc of votes to which enough Democrats may add themselves to constitute a majority. Last week's proposed Democratic strategy was equally simple: to arouse Democrats, who have a 92-vote majority on paper, to attend House sessions in numbers sufficient to study and meet Mr. Martin's moves on a party as well as legislative basis. Dissenting members of the Democratic caucus emerged from it in sufficient numbers to generate the above headline-of-the-week. For the spirit of revolt still outweighed the spirit of unity in the Majority party.

The revolt gained point when Chairman Drewry of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced that now, a full year before the preliminaries to next

Congressional elections, his group would undertake an expert survey of the electorate's real feeling and "mandate." This was in definite defiance of Franklin Roosevelt's comfortable theory that the 1938 election results were an agglomerate of local issues & personalities, not evidence of a national trend.*