All Work & No Play ...

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Late one afternoon last week a fire broke out in the sub-basement of the new House Office Building in Washington. Smoke filled the building, sent at least five U.S. Representatives clambering out of windows and down firemen's ladders. If most of the House members had not already declared themselves on vacation, there might have been some Congressional casualties (two firemen were hurt, a dozen suffered from smoke).

Next day only 13 of the House's 435 members were on the floor when Speaker Sam Rayburn banged his gavel, adjourned the House until Monday, Oct. 8. The recess was the longest any wartime House had planned. Members can be called back into session on three days' notice in an emergency (but at least 100 were already off, or soon would be, on extended overseas trips).

The Senate remained in session, but when they had taken action on the San Francisco World Charter, Senators would be ready for vacations too. The 79th Congress had plodded steadily since Jan. 3. Its record on war and foreign relations legislation was good.

It had approved Bretton Woods (see above) and Hot Springs (U.S. membership in the United Nations food organization), extended and improved reciprocal trade agreements, extended Lend-Lease, upped the Export-Import Bank's lending powers from $700 million to $3.5 billion, continued Selective Service and price controls, upped the national debt limit to $300 billion, set up a $5.7-billion tax-relief program for reconverting war industries (TIME, May 21).

Work notably left undone: a broadened Social Security program; Federal relief for reconversion unemployed (President Truman had urged payments up to $25 a week); presidential succession (the House has passed a bill to make the Speaker next in line, but the Senate has made no move) ; peacetime universal military training; a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission.